Goals: To provide helpful tips on addressing closed/open/pending ticket statuses.

Permissions:

The general rule of thumb is to ask yourself the appropriate question based on if you replied to requester or not. 


If a reply was sent, ask yourself this question: 


"What will I do if the requester* does not respond?"
Then look at these four options. Set the status as stated.
  • No Action Needed: It is the attendee responsibility to take action. Not hearing doesn't affect us. Set to CLOSED.
  • Eventually Check Status: If you eventually will need to check back on this, like a few days from now, then set to PENDING. See below regarding pending "To Do Tasks"
  • Critical Monitoring: Status is such that we need to monitor or make sure it doesn't slip through the cracks. Assign it to person responsible to monitor, and leave as OPEN.
  • Ticket Actions Done: If the ticket is done and no further action is anticipated and no future follow-up is needed, the ticket should be Set to CLOSED.


If no reply to the requester was sent, you need to ask:


"What action is the requester* expecting?"

Then look at these four options. Set the status as stated.
  • Informational Only: The requester is simply informing us of something, but there is no action needed. Assign to appropriate group who needs to know about this. Set priority as LOW.
  • Action Request w/o Notification:  They are requesting a specific action but they are not specifically asking for a reply. Assign to appropriate Group and set priority to HIGH. 
  • Critical Action Needed: Something is wrong or they need an answer. Set status to urgent, assign to Group and send a note to the Group Supervisor to let them know that their is a critical ticket in the system.

In all of these scenarios where a reply was not sent to the requester, the needs to be: Set to OPEN.


The most important thing to keep in mind is that tickets in PENDING status means that no agent is actively looking at the ticket!  Pending is designed for 1) When we are waiting on an answer from a requester or 2) The agent has actively put this ticket on hold to act on later.


Pending = No Immediate Action


If we need an agent answer before we can proceed, the requester is not expecting reply to the requester was sent, you need to ask:


"What action is the requester* expecting?"

Then 

Other Important Notes:


PENDING - To Do Tasks

If you set a ticket to "pending" you should use the "To Do" task list to set up a due date for when this ticket should be checked again. The format is to put the date it should be looked at again. Use the format of day plus three letter month. So the 10th of January would become 10 Jan.  Then you put the ticket number in parenthesis. Then write out the action that need to occur on that date.


So for example, if you have a ticket where a person was told that their desired roommate had not yet registered and we could only hold the spot for that roommate for 10 days. And today's date was February 10th, then you would set the status to PENDING and the To Do item would be:
20 Feb (999) Check if John Smith Registered and assign to room.


CLOSED vs RESOLVED Status Difference

Within FreshDesk there is the option to set a ticket to "Closed" or "Resolved".  You may be wondering what the difference is. Here is the traditional usage and difference between the two statuses.

  • Resolved: This is when the ticket is "completed" but it is in a waiting period to see if the customer comes back with any additional information. At the moment the ticket is set to "resolved" a 48-hour timer starts. Anytime there is new action on the ticket, the timer resets. When the timer hits 0 hours remaining, a trigger is initiated that sends out a notification to the customer stating that this ticket has had 48 hours of no activity and is now set to closed.

  • Closed: The ticket is considered completed an no more action is needed and no timers are set. If the customer replies the ticket is reopened. And the 48-hour timer is reengaged to be started if the ticket is set to "resolved." If an agent writes a note with this ticket after it is closed, no timer is set. It remains closed.


Leaving Tickets in OPEN Status

Tickets cannot be left in "open" status. Open status indicate that Agent Action is Needed! An open ticket will be reviewed at the 24-hour and 48-hour point. 

  • 24-Hours From Creation: Triage will review the ticket to see if an agent is assigned. If there is an agent, Triage will contact that agent and ask them to get this ticket resolved. If no agent is assigned, the group supervisor is contacted.
  • 48-Hours From Ticket Creation: Triage will again make a second note, this time only notifying the group supervisor. 
  • 72-Hours From Ticket Creation: The ticket is escalated to the Leadership Group for resolution. The unresponsive agent may be contacted directly by the leadership team.

As an alternative to leaving a ticket open, you should use the "Pending - To Do Tasks" option above. You will need to make yourself a note to get this ticket resolved by that due date. Or realize that after that due date a past due pending ticket will be set to open and the 24-hour clock resets and starts over.


Other notes:

*What is the "Requester?"

This is the person who is listed as the "contact" in the ticket.  It is the person who will receive your "reply".  If multiple people are included in the CC line, they are not "requesters".  Contacts are anyone in the FreshDesk contact listing. But the requester is who is specifically the point person from our contact/customer base with whom we are corresponding on this ticket.