# Summary A ticket management system is important for providing a single source of truth regarding tickets. Without a single source of truth, your team will lack proper prioritization, measurement of important KPIs, and ability to efficiently work together to knock those tickets out. As the single source of truth, it is important that all support personnel are diligent to keep the ticketing system up-to-date, immediately logging chats and external email threads on the corresponding ticket and updating end users daily regarding the status of their requests. When you have a well managed ticket management system, the business will have incredible visibility into their open requests with your support team. This means happy users and faster, better business decisions as they get the answers they need faster than ever before. # Definition Before we being, let's get on the same page regarding what a "ticket" is: tickets are simply service requests ("I want something new") and incident reports ("something isn't working for me") submitted to your NetSuite Support team by the business. # Why - the Benefits Why a single source of truth? What's wrong with agility? If a support rep is good and providing great support through other channels (chats, emails, etc.), shouldn't you let them fly? Don't impose structure that will hinder their work, right? While a scattered approach may work well for small businesses. And you may have a highly sophisticated system for tracking emails, chats, and tasks (the starts of a ticket management system :)). As soon as you grow to more than one support rep or begin using an external partner for support... A single source of truth with the useful features you find in most Ticket Management Systems will become a must in order to: - Prevent tickets from falling through the cracks - Prioritize work - Measure results And you'll likely find value in such a system long before you expand the team. # What to Track Your ticket management system, at a minimum, is a place to list all the service requests and incidents reported by the business or by your team. In this system, Metadata and KPIs around your support requests and incidents are the core things to track when when you want to improve collaboration, optimize processes, and provide day-to-day clarity for your team. ## Metadata Metadata simply is the information about the ticket that the business tracks to help you provide support. The general goal of tracking this information is to to improve operational efficiency - make your team faster and better at providing support. Whatever you decide to track, flexibility is critical. If you find that you're not using a particular piece of metadata and it's taking effort to track, STOP tracking it! Note that metadata is something you can gather from users via form or a support rep can enter it during [[Standard Operating Procedures#Ticket Triage|ticket triage]]. Below are some example data points and the purpose for each. | Data Point | Sample Datum | Description | Purpose | | ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Title | Build Days Sales Outstanding Report | A one-line description of what is being requested. May often need to be re-worded by Support Rep | Provide summary of the request at a glance. | | Description | I need a new report | A description of the request. Includes both the original request AND the results of ticket triage completed by a support rep. | Provide pertinent details of request. | | Assignee | Adam Smith, Greg Frank | Who's responsible on the support side | Informs who is responsible | | Status | New, Active, Pending User, Pending 3rd Party, Scheduled, Complete, Closed | Where's the ticket at | informs what are next steps | | Type | Request or Incident | Something from the service catalog or an issue being reported | Informs which SOP should be followed | | Sub-Type | Technical Issue; Training Issue; Business Process Issue; Standard Service Request; Advanced Service Request. | A more specific classification of the ticket. | Informs which SOP should be followed | | Business Unit | Sales, Credit, Accounting, Warehouse, Product Planning | Which segment of the business is requesting support | Informs where documentation belongs in KMS. | | Business Process | Order Entry, Month-End-Close, Fulfillment, Item Registration | Which process is affected by the request | Informs where documentation is in [[Knowledge Management System\|KMS]]. | ## Key Performance Indicators KPIs are essential for technology leaders seeking to make data-driven decisions. That's a philosophical statement, so let's break it down to help make it applicable to you managing a NetSuite Support team. KPIs. These are the important (*key*) indicators of how well your team is performing. It's essential. There is no other way to make data-driven decisions than to track the data. Seeking. It's only essential if you see value in data-driven decisions. If data-driven decisions are not on your radar (or the radar of your higher-ups), DON'T bother tracking KPIs. Data-driven decisions. That's a buzz-word today, but there are reasons business leaders find them important. I recommend asking chatGPT "what are data-driven decisions and why are they important?" if you want more information. There you have it - KPIs are essential. If you're setting up or revamping your KPIs, I recommend starting with the purpose or goal you're looking to improve and finding KPIs that will aid you in reaching those goals. Below a few KPIs you might find helpful. Notice a purpose is documented for each KPI. | KPI | Example | Description | Purpose | | --------------------- | ------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Hours to 1st Response | .5 | Number of business hours between ticket submission and first response. | This is an easy metric to track and speed here gives users a sense that they are being heard. | | Days to Resolution | 3 | Number of business days between ticket submission and ticket completion | This is an easy metric to track and speed here gives management an indication of the teams overall ability to provide support. | | Understanding (1-10) | 8 | Self or peer assessment of how accurately the support rep understood the issue. | Informs management of team's ability to understand the business and the business's ability to communicate support needs. | | Responsiveness (1-10) | 10 | Self or peer assessment of how prompt the support rep was in responding to users. | Informs management of team's ability to respond quickly throughout the life of the ticket. | | Accuracy (1-10) | 9 | Self or peer assessment of if the ticket resolution was technically accurate. | Informs management of team's ability to provide the right answer. | > Whatever KPIs you track, you MUST use them to make business decisions regarding how you provide support. Set goals and celebrate every achievement. # Diligence For a system to be the source of truth for anything, it must contain ALL the relevant truth. This requires diligence on the support rep side and on the management side to ensure everything is tracked in your ticket management system. As an IT Manager in charge of NetSuite Support for your business, you must re-enforce with your team the importance of using the system to track information. Put the reasons on paper for why the team needs to put EVERYTHING in the system. Setup the system to make the support rep's job easier. Talk about how it makes everyone's jobs easier. And take feedback from the team. When you have a mindset of continual improvement, feedback from the team is gold. Don't waste it. Don't lose it. # Configuration ## Continual, Incremental Improvement Just a brief word on continual, incremental improvement: it is incredibly difficult to completely revamp your support systems, but you can make small improvements every day. Set a goal for yourself in this area and strive to make incremental improvements to your processes toward that goal. If you take an hour once a week to work on this, you'll be surprised the difference in just a few months ## System Selection I recently saw a post on LinkedIn stating that your system selection process probably matters less than you realize. There's a lot of truth in that statement. I've seen great systems setup poorly and I've seen mediocre systems serve a team well. That's why this page is about system setup, not system selection. That being said, there are a few things you should consider that can improve the success of your Ticket Management System: 1. Understand where you want to be. Set a vision for what you think your support team should look like in the ideal and consider that ideal as you review systems. 2. Write up a Business Requirements Document (BRD) for the system. Document 1) the high-level business requirements (things your boss could read and understand) and 2) the functional requirements (things your team will see and say "yeah, we need it to do that"). 3. You might find it useful to classify these requirements as nice-to-have, important, and critical. 4. Contact sales for the systems you're reviewing and request a demo. Sending them your BRD can help the sales reps prepare for the demo and will make the entire process a little smoother. 5. Pick a system and stick with it. You can iterate on how you use the system, but these are not quick to procure and setup, and you don't want to spend large amounts of time switching from system to system. # Next Steps Checkout the [[1st Brain/NetSuite Support Processes/README]] for the book table of contents, or just cruise along to the next section, [[Project Management System]]