How To Manage Your Ticketing System Using a CRM

Customer retention is heavily influenced by the after-sales care customers receive. In certain brand interactions, customers feel tricked into thinking a company offers great customer service, only to be left without help after closing the deal. 

It’s the opposite of a retention strategy. In fact, very often, these customers swiftly move to a competitor when making future purchasing decisions. 

The goal of after-sales service is to show that a company values the customer’s satisfaction—even after the purchase. 

66% of B2B and 52% of B2C customers stop purchasing after a negative customer service interaction. This is why a ticketing system represents the best that after-sales service has to offer customers and companies; since it allows for efficient tracking and management of customer inquiries. 

That way, they’re better equipped to identify and address issues they may have with their product or service. On the enterprise front, a ticketing system helps reduce the number of returns, refunds and negative reviews, which can positively impact the company's brand image. 

But how do ticketing management systems work? They streamline the resolution of internal IT issues for organisations by managing "tickets," which provide context and details about the issues, such as what category they fall under as well as the relevant tags. 

By issuing customer tickets, customers can easily and quickly report issues or request assistance with their purchase without having to navigate through multiple channels of communication (think phone or email, social media, live chat, web forms, and more). With this, customer service teams can easily assign and track issues, prioritise them, and resolve them on time. 

In this post, you’ll learn how to stretch the value of your CRM software to cover ticketing management systems functionalities and turn one-time customers into brand-loyal advocates:

What is a ticketing system?

A ticketing system in CRM, or customer relationship management, is a tool that allows customers to submit and track requests for support or assistance. These requests, or "tickets," can be submitted through various channels such as email, phone, or a web-based form and are typically assigned a unique number for easy tracking. 

The ticketing system allows customer service representatives to manage, assign, and resolve requests on time and enables customers to check the status of their requests and receive updates. 

Here’s a broad look at a ticketing system within a CRM in action:

• A customer submits a request for assistance through a web form on the company's website. This creates a new ticket in the CRM's ticketing system.
• The ticket is automatically assigned a unique number and routed to the appropriate customer service representative based on the nature of the request. The customer service rep then receives an email notification about the new ticket and can access the ticket details through the CRM's user interface.
• The customer service representative responds to the customer's request and updates the ticket with any necessary information. The customer can log in to the CRM's customer portal and view the status of their ticket, as well as any updates or responses from the customer service representative.
• Once the customer's request is resolved, the customer service representative can mark the ticket as closed. The customer is notified of the closure and given the option to rate the service provided and provide feedback. The agent can also re-open it if any of the parties have any follow-up to do.
• The customer service team can use the feedback to improve the service provided, and also the ticketing system can use the data to track the customer's history and interactions, which can be used to personalise the service provided.
• The CRM system also includes analytics and reporting, which allows the customer service team to track ticket volume, resolution time, and customer satisfaction over time.

This is just one example of how a ticketing system might function within a CRM, but the specifics will vary depending on the system being used.

Benefits of the ticketing system in your CRM.

A survey conducted by Parature found that disconnected systems prevent ticket resolution: 42% of agents are not able to resolve customer queries due to outdated or disconnected systems. 

Bad customer interaction and disconnected systems also yield a negative turnover in customer service reps, averaging 29% annually. Besides monitoring your helpdesk, there are other benefits of using a ticketing system within a CRM: 
 

Improved customer support

With ticketing systems, customers can easily submit support requests and track the progress of their issues. This improves communication for customer support teams to provide timely and efficient assistance, which leads to greater customer satisfaction. 

Given that 65% of new business leads are from referrals, and when referred by someone, people are 4x more likely to purchase, existing customers are a key driver of customer acquisition. But they won’t recommend your business through positive word-of-mouth if they are unhappy with your after-sales service.

Enhanced productivity through automation

With a ticketing system, customer support teams can manage and prioritise high volumes of requests at once, rather than having to respond to each one individually. 

When your team knows who is handling what, ticketing becomes easier. The automation capabilities of a CRM can work magic, especially in cases where there’s a high number of tickets to be handled all at once. 

Using efficy CRM, you can set automation workflows to assign (so the ticket gets the most qualified agent on your team), categorise, and prioritise tickets to customers and get your support team to resolve customer issues at a faster pace. 

You may set automation triggers to respond to certain commonly asked queries that may become too repetitive for your customer service to respond to manually.

Better tracking and reporting

Detailed information about customer interactions, such as the number of tickets received, response times, and resolution rates, are gathered in a ticketing system. This data can be used to improve customer service and identify areas for improvement. 

With a ticketing management system in your CRM, you also have sufficient data to prioritise tickets according to your business requirements. For instance, placing high-value clients on the top of your lists. 

efficy CRM presents a dashboard where you can track customer interaction and key customer service metrics. This means crucial data like the ticket resolution time, number of tickets generated and their success rate, and in-depth analysis of these reports to discover customer pain points and finetune your strategy to address them.

Better collaboration and knowledge sharing

Imagine having to sort through the clutter of spreadsheets and email inboxes and then back to the ticket system before getting sufficient information to handle a ticket. 

With a CRM, the centralised system gives you all the full details and required context to easily solve complex customer issues in the ticketing system — no hassle, no information silos. 

efficy’s 360°customer view helps you gain sufficient insight into your customers before starting a conversation with them. Across channels, you’re able to view your customers’ location, buying behaviour, past interactions, history, preferences, and other relevant data you need to engage more efficiently with customers and forge even stronger customer relationships.

Going beyond ticketing with efficy CRM.

For enterprises seeking a more efficient way to build stronger and more meaningful customer relationships, a CRM system is worth considering. 

You’ll not only harness data, track customer interactions, monitor your helpdesk and streamline support processes, but you’ll also cut costs since you won’t have to invest in a separate ticketing system software. 

But when adopting a CRM system, certain considerations come into play. For one, you need a CRM that adds context to conversations. efficy CRM is packed full of features to help you take advantage of data to build stronger connections with customers before, during, and after their tickets are resolved. 

efficy CRM presents an opportunity to manage your support tickets without losing out on sales, marketing, and support functions. We’ve seen hundreds of tickets created and resolved by our Europe-based customers, most of whom are enterprises just like yours. Want to see how? Click here to book your demo. 
 

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