Automated ticketing system
Learn more about the top automated ticketing systems on the market.
A guide to the best automated ticketing systems
Last updated January 22, 2024
When businesses receive high volumes of support requests from customers, agents can easily fall behind. Aside from taking a toll on customer satisfaction, this can also lead to burnout among customer service representatives and lower job satisfaction.
The good news is that your reps don’t have to burden themselves by taking on all support requests. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 73 percent of consumers expect to interact more with AI and believe it can improve the quality of service they receive.
Invest in an automated customer service system to improve ticket resolution rates and allow your specially trained agents to focus on more complex issues. When you do, you’ll invest in a better experience for your customer base and staff.
Follow along and choose the best automated ticketing software for your business’s needs, or jump to the section of your choice using our menu below.
What is an automated ticketing system?
An automated ticketing system is an important component of help desk software that uses AI to manage inbound customer support requests, providing assistance to customer service agents.
Automated ticketing software processes incoming messages from customers and can:
Deflect high volume support requests so agents can focus on more complex issues
Open tickets with contextual information and automatically route them to the most appropriate agent
Direct customers to help center resources
Remind customers when they need to reply to an agent
The 10 best automated ticketing systems of 2023
In this section, we break down the 10 best automated ticketing systems of 2023. We based rankings on features, pricing, customer reviews, and efficacy.
1. Zendesk
Keep your organization firing on all cylinders with the Zendesk automated ticketing system. Zendesk helps businesses automate ticketing with intelligent routing and optical character recognition (OCR). AI can understand account context, customer sentiment, language, and intent. OCR can then account for agent status and capacity and prioritize conversations to quickly route customers to the most appropriate agent.
The two work together to create a seamless experience for customers.
Also, all productivity automations—or tasks running on a pre-set schedule—run on open tickets according to the cadence your system administrator sets. You can also set triggers to automate menial or repetitive tasks that must happen when an action occurs. Actions can include anything from sending an email to confirm receipt of a support request to dispatching a customer satisfaction survey once a conversation ends.
Our automated ticketing software is also highly adaptable, so it’s easy for system administrators to make customizations that empower agents to provide better customer experiences, deflect tickets, and boost productivity.
You can even use Zendesk bots to create custom workflows and serve customers around the clock, reducing agent workloads and giving customers back some of their time.
Features:
Intelligent routing
OCR
Easy-to-set-up automations and workflows
Unified omnichannel agent interface with customer context and conversation history
Real-time reporting and analytics
Ticket tagging
Integrations with other systems
No-code chatbot builder
Self-service
Suggested responses
Pricing:
Support Team: $19 per agent/month
Support Professional: $55 per agent/month
Support Enterprise: $115 per agent/month
Free trial: 14 days
2. Zoho
Zoho Desk, Zoho’s ticket management system, can help you streamline support request handling and nurture long-term customer relationships. This ticketing software helps make businesses more accessible to their clientele through omnichannel support and its proprietary AI assistant, Zia.
Zia deflects tickets away from busy support agents by directing users to informative help center articles. She can then report to system administrators on any insufficient documentation to ensure they’re aware of gaps in the existing knowledge base.
Zia can also decipher user sentiment to collect ticket context and provide reps with the information they need to properly triage support conversations.
Features:
Omnichannel ticketing
Unified customer view
AI assistant
Sentiment analysis
Advanced response editor
Self-service
Pricing:
Standard: $20 per user/month
Professional: $35 per user/month
Enterprise: $50 per user/month
Free trial: 15 days
Learn more about Zoho for Zendesk.
3. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is Freshworks’ help desk solution, and it provides customer service agents with the tools they need to deliver better customer experiences. Freshdesk offers a single customer view and blends with the AI-powered bots in Freshchat to streamline multichannel support.
With Freshworks’ robust help desk tool, you can automate an array of ticket management tasks, including:
Creating workflows based on customer location, language, and keywords in their support request
Ensuring the ticket status remains current as agents make progress on a resolution
Reminding agents of service level agreement (SLA) policies when tickets are open too long
Escalating a ticket to management if SLAs aren’t met
You can also create custom routing rules that set your organization up for success.
Features:
Agent collision detection
SLA management
Thank you detection
Canned replies
Repetitive task automation
Ticket field suggestions
Contextual ticketing
Pricing:
Growth: $18 per agent/month
Pro: $59 per agent/month
Enterprise: $95 per agent/month
Free trial: 21 days
Free plan: Available for up to 10 agents
Learn more about the Freshdesk integration for Zendesk.
4. LiveAgent
You can equip your team with LiveAgent’s ticketing system to improve your business’s overall support capabilities. This help desk is user-friendly, offers many customer service features, and can be a viable solution for personalizing support.
LiveAgent’s automated ticketing solution can condense inbound customer communications from email, phone calls, website chat messages, social media mentions, and more in a central location without requiring additional work for agents.
Use LiveAgent’s advanced automations, triggers, and integrations to revolutionize your customer support operations.
Features:
Universal agent inbox
Canned messages
Internal contextual notes
Customer portal with built-in knowledge base
Pricing:
Free: $0/month
Small business: $12 per agent/month
Medium business: $35 per agent/month
Large business: $59 per agent/month
Free trial: Up to 30 days
5. HubSpot Ticketing System
While HubSpot’s bread and butter is marketing, the company’s ticketing system is a worthwhile solution for businesses that need to manage customer support requests on a budget.
Users report that HubSpot is easy to set up, and they enjoy the built-in ticket management features, email automation, and feedback surveys.
However, some users state that it can quickly get pricey if you need to add a lot of contacts to the system, and it could benefit from better chat flows that automatically open tickets for live chats.
Features:
Unified customer view
Ticket prioritization and management
Automated ticket tagging
Ticket assignment and escalation
Pricing:
Free: $0/month
Starter CRM Suite: $30/month
Starter Service Hub: $20/month
Professional Service Hub: $500/month
Enterprise Service Hub: $1,200/month
Starter Operations Hub: $20/month
Professional Operations Hub: $800/month
Enterprise Operations Hub: $2,000/month
Free trial: Not available
6. SupportBee
SupportBee’s ticketing system enables help desk agents to collaborate to resolve customer issues efficiently.
Streamline interdepartmental conversations to ensure quick ticket resolutions whether your agents are sitting at their desks or on the go.
The SupportBee ticketing system has an integrated knowledge base, a customer portal, and a shared inbox. Customers appreciate the platform’s customization capabilities and the ability to set up multiple knowledge bases.
However, others say they wish SupportBee had more no-code customization options, faster load times, and better formatting for email replies and forwarding to reduce disorganization.
Features:
Shared inbox
Integrated knowledge base
Customer web portal
Mobile ticketing system
Easy installation
Pricing:
Startup: $15 per user/month
Enterprise: $20 per user/month
Free trial: 14 days
7. TeamSupport
TeamSupport brands itself as a holistic B2B customer service solution with ticket management functionality. The platform is designed with team collaboration in mind and the goal of reducing overall customer churn.
TeamSupport is one of the more expensive ticketing solutions, but users report that the catalog of features, customizability, and ease of ticket assignment make it worthwhile.
However, other users note that the TeamSupport mobile app could benefit from better integrations. Also, since it isn’t HIPAA enabled, TeamSupport isn’t a one-stop solution for healthcare companies that must adhere to federally mandated privacy requirements.
Features:
Email integration
Ticket automation
Customizable workflows
Knowledge base article suggestions
Sentiment analysis
Mobile ticketing
Ticket collision
Custom ticket fields
Pricing:
Essential Support: $49 per agent/month
Enterprise Support: $69 per agent/month
Complete Customer Support Suite: $119 per agent/month
Free trial: 14 days
8. HappyFox
HappyFox is a simple ticketing system built for operations teams. Use HappyFox smart rules to speed up first-contact resolutions, modernize your customer service processes, reduce human error, and eliminate grunt work.
HappyFox prides itself on the simplicity of its ticketing system and offers custom ticket queues that streamline customer conversations from email, social media, chat, phone, and more.
With this automated ticketing system, you can also set up auto-timers to track resolution times, understand trends, pull data from integrated apps, and direct users to self-service whenever possible.
Features:
Ticket tagging and sorting
Omnichannel ticketing
Private note collaboration
Pre-written replies
Anti-agent collision
Integrated applications
Pricing:
Mighty: $39 per agent/month
Fantastic: $59 per agent/month
Enterprise: $79 per agent/month
Enterprise Plus: $99 per agent/month
Free trial: Not specified for the ticketing system
9. Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management by Atlassian is a comprehensive automated ticketing system for legal, IT, HR, and other teams.
With Jira, users can get up and running quickly, view all conversations, and use integrations to import communications from applications like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Jira Service Management offers numerous integrations and out-of-the-box capabilities to support your business’s unique collaboration, task management, compliance, productivity, planning, self-service, reporting, and pipeline needs.
Features:
Request management
Organized customer interactions
Customer support integrations
Ticket resolution metrics
Repetitive task automations
Pricing:
Free: $0/month
Standard: $21 per agent/month
Premium: $47 per agent/month
Enterprise: Contact sales
Free trial: 10 agents free for 12 months or 7-day free trial for up to 5,000 agents
10. Web Help Desk by SolarWinds
SolarWinds offers omnichannel ticketing software to help customer service agents resolve support tickets more efficiently.
To break it down, SolarWinds uses an IT Service Management (ITSM) approach to automated ticketing, meaning every asset, configuration, automation, and piece of contextual information will flow well within a centralized system.
Build a service desk to customize specifications for:
Problem management
Issue management
IT management
Change management
Employee self-service
Customer self-service
Features:
Machine learning
Ticket classification and routing automation
Centralized support requests
Service desk dashboard
Custom reports
Employee service portal
Pricing:
Team: $19 per technician/month
Business: $39 per technician/month
Professional: $69 per technician/month
Enterprise: $89 per technician/month
Free trial: 30 days
Comparison chart of the 10 best automated ticketing software
Software | Starting price | Free trial | Key features |
---|---|---|---|
Zendesk |
$19 per agent/month |
14 days |
|
Zoho Desk |
$20 per user/month |
15 days |
|
Freshdesk |
Free plan available |
21 days |
|
LiveAgent |
Free plan available |
Up to 30 days |
|
HubSpot Ticketing System |
Free plan available |
Unavailable |
|
SupportBee |
$15 per user/month |
14 days |
|
TeamSupport |
$49 per agent/month |
14 days |
|
HappyFox |
$39 per agent/month |
Unknown |
|
Jira Service Management |
Free plan available |
Up to 12 months |
|
Web Help Desk by SolarWinds |
$19 per technician/month |
30 days |
|
Features of automated ticketing software
When searching for the best automated ticketing system, look at features first. Here are six primary features you should look for in ticket management software.
Routing: Your ticketing system should help streamline routing and ticket assignment. Ideally, it will have intelligent routing capabilities that automatically assign agents to tickets according to the business rules you set and agent specialties.
Productivity: A good automated ticketing system will handle simple tasks that keep productivity high by allowing agents to focus on work that requires their expertise. Your ticketing system should include automations, tagging, and workflow management tools.
Unified customer view: Choose an automated ticketing system that stores customer data in a centralized location where agents can quickly access it when needed.
Real-time reporting and analytics: Ticketing system data is important to any operations center because analytics can provide key insights that inform hiring needs, help with business decisions, and inspire ideas for improving the customer experience.
System integrations: Select a ticketing system that is compatible with the integrations you use daily to ensure continuity of service and to maintain your high level of customer care. Some common ticketing system integrations include password protection tools, project management software, chatbots, bug-tracking tools, and security compliance technology.
No-code chatbot builder: AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in the world of customer service because they can help deflect tickets and collect customer information. A no-code chatbot builder makes this technology accessible to companies that may not have the resources to build or acquire one otherwise.
These features will lend themselves well when it comes to cultivating a more organized help desk, ensuring that your chatbots provide relevant self-service recommendations and foster a better agent experience.
Benefits of automated ticketing software
Automating your help desk ticketing system allows you to automate workflows, use ticket deflection, streamline omnichannel support, create a uniform view, and uncover recurring issues.
Automate support workflows and task management: One of the key benefits of automated ticketing is that it allows you to automate tasks that don’t require the expertise of a trained agent.
Deploy ticket deflection: AI-powered ticketing software can deflect simple questions and automatically suggest knowledge base articles for internal or external support tickets based on the keywords present in the support request.
Streamline omnichannel support: Omnichannel customer service is essential to any modern help desk. An automated ticketing system can help eliminate information silos and keep all staff members aware of each customer’s history.
Create a uniform customer view: A single customer view and ticket tagging can keep tickets organized and support interdepartmental collaboration.
Uncover recurring support issues: A good automated ticketing system will also collect data so you can regularly pull reports and take proactive steps to resolve recurring problems. This information is a great way to understand what your customers need.
How to implement an automated ticketing system
You can implement a fully optimized IT ticketing system in five steps:
1. Identify business needs
Review past ticket data to better understand business ticketing needs. This data can include:
The types of support requests you receive most often
How many tickets you receive on average
The resources you need to resolve them
How long it takes to resolve customer requests on average
2. Research customer needs
Aside from taking note of past customer requests and their frequency, think ahead to any product releases or changes that may confuse customers.
Review help center data to identify opportunities for new knowledge base articles that your AI chatbot can use to provide a more robust automated self-service experience.
3. Create ticket automation rules
Once you select a ticket management system and fully understand your business’s needs, you should set up ticket automation rules. A system administrator can create smart automation rules that will complete an action under specific conditions.
Some ways you can automate ticketing and create more dynamic workflows include:
Routing tickets to agents based on skill
Using standardized inputs and fields
Using triggers to minimize repetitive tasks
4. Build a knowledge base for agents and customers
Use the insights you gained from your assessment of previous knowledge base data to write articles and expand your help center. Add them to your knowledge base so your system’s AI can recommend relevant articles to the customers and agents seeking information.
5. Write canned responses
Canned responses are pre-written replies to simple yet common questions. You can also use these standardized responses in “no-reply” situations to speed up response times.
For example, you can write a canned response to let customers know that you’re working on their ticket or that you’re closing a conversation due to a lack of response.
You can write a canned response by:
Addressing the customer by name
Re-stating the situation
Explaining the next steps
Providing a way for the customer to follow up
Signing off with a real agent’s name
How to choose the right help desk ticketing automation software
While features play a key role in choosing the right automated ticketing system for your business, you must ensure it ticks off some other important boxes.
All the essentials we list below will help you deliver a more satisfactory experience to your agents and customers and ensure that acquiring the new software won’t set you back operationally or financially.
Checklist for choosing automated ticketing software:
Creates a frictionless agent experience
Makes financial sense (consider time to value and total cost of ownership)
Ensures your support platform is reliable and secure
Increases profitability and the likelihood of a return on your investment
Provides dedicated training and customer support
Zendesk sets each customer up for success with dedicated account management and easy access to CX experts to make sure you get the most value out of your purchase with the least amount of headaches.
Frequently asked questions
Learn the answers to the most common questions about automated ticketing.
Why does your business need an automated ticketing system?
Omnichannel customer service ticketing systems can open problem tickets and use skills-based routing to ensure all customer issues get in front of the right agent for the job. They can also track open tickets, escalate tickets with unresolved issues, send surveys when tickets close, and perform repetitive tasks when a pre-defined trigger occurs.
Why is automation an important part of a ticketing system?
An automated ticketing system for customer service has some serious potential to speed up ticket resolution times. Automated ticketing systems and chatbots provide quick answers to most support queries and can make representatives more readily available to handle tougher issues that the robots can’t.
An automated ticketing system can also:
Lower payroll costs
Free up specialized agents to focus on complex issues
Deflect basic or repetitive issues to prevent agent burnout
Speed up resolution times by collecting essential customer data
Facilitate cross-team collaboration by documenting conversation history in a centralized database
What are some best practices for ticket automation?
Here are nine best practices that businesses should follow after adopting an automated ticketing system:
Rely on AI chatbots to handle simple tasks and collect customer information.
Train agents to make the most of your automated ticketing system.
Document your strategy for ticket prioritization.
Ensure tickets are always organized and up-to-date.
Understand your system’s automation capabilities.
Create canned responses for repetitive messages.
Use SLA management capabilities to meet contractual obligations.
Monitor ticket statuses and reward high-performing agents.
Send a survey to the customer after you close the ticket.
GlassesUSA.com sees CX success with voice of the customer data
“Zendesk is directly contributing to enhancing our customer experience and satisfaction, which in turn improves retention, revenue, conversion, and word of mouth marketing.”
Doron Pryluk
SVP of Customer Experience
Read customer storyTry the Zendesk ticketing system for free
When it comes to customer service, “okay” isn’t an option. Get it right with Zendesk ticketing. Claim your free trial to get a first-hand look at how Zendesk can help you revolutionize the customer experience.
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