1. Anatomy of a Trouble(d) Ticket:
Martha Lundgren
Texas Association of School Boards
Copyright 2007, Texas Association of School Boards

2. Thanks to Tarina Williams and the ITT group at Austin Energy for sharing templates and internal training materials.

3. Benefits of ticket documentation best practices
Minimize customer
frustration
Don’t make them explain it (again)
Incidents and requests don’t get lost
Another technician can pick up the ticket
Complete record of incident/request and work to date for assignment, escalation, service review
With the customer
With escalation teams or other departments
Smooth handoffs to level II or collaborating departments
Much of the transition work at promotion or exit already done
New techs can do more work, more quickly, accurately and independently
Reduce duplication
of work

4. Benefits of ticket documentation best practices (cont.)
Increase credibility
of support staff
Don’t make them explain it (again)
Incidents and requests don’t get lost
Another technician can pick up the ticket
Complete record of incident/request and work to date for assignment, escalation, service review
With the customer
With escalation teams or other departments
Smooth handoffs to level II or collaborating departments
Much of the transition work at promotion or exit already done
New techs can do more work, more quickly, accurately and independently
Promote collaboration

5. Benefits of ticket documentation best practices (cont.)
Speed knowledge
transfer
Promote problem
management and
problem prevention
Don’t make them explain it (again)
Incidents and requests don’t get lost
Another technician can pick up the ticket
Complete record of incident/request and work to date for assignment, escalation, service review
With the customer
With escalation teams or other departments
Smooth handoffs to level II or collaborating departments
Much of the transition work at promotion or exit already done
New techs can do more work, more quickly, accurately and independently

6. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”

7. Three C’s – Complete, Concise, Correct
etc.
etc.
Complete
Every incident/request gets logged!
Who? What? When? Where? How?
Priority, severity, impact, urgency
Others?
etc.
etc.
etc.
“Demographic” information
Incident or request description
Troubleshooting steps and results
“Done” and “Fixed” don’t count.
etc.
etc.
etc.

8. Three C’s . . . Concise BLUF Just the facts, ma’am Lists vs narrative
Ask one, answer one
KISS
Don’t sacrifice clarity for brevity

9. Three C’s . . . Correct Client information Mary Jones
Acme Brik

10. Three C’s . . .
Correct
Client information
Short subject description

11. Three C’s . . . Correct Client information Short subject description
Specific steps to perform a function or fix

12. One more . . .
Commitment

13. Writing ticket descriptions, resolutions and notes
Who are you writing for?
Know your audience
Who are you writing for?
What do they want from you?
Writing style appropriate to audience
Incident manager
Level II techs
Problem manager
Peer techs
Your manager
The customer
Knowledge manager
Yourself
. . . or all of the above?

14. Keep it professional
Address the service request, not the person or personality
<snip> quotes from
Use only common, widely used abbreviations
Avoid jargon
First or third person; names or pronouns?
Grammar and spelling matter
No emotions, no opinions.
Just the facts, ma’am.

15. Organizational Standards
Specific
Objective
Actionable
Relevant
Professional

16. Documentation improvement program
Review current state
Develop
organizational standards
standardized ticket scorecard
training and coaching program
Pilot
Review results of the pilot
Communicate WIIFM
Train – Coach – Review – Repeat
Incorporate in new hire training

17. Service Ticket Quality Assessment
Audience will have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned to the three examples from the beginning of the presentation, using STQA form and marking up the example tickets to improve them.

18. What’s wrong (and right!) with these tickets?
Audience will have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned to the three examples from the beginning of the presentation, using STQA form and marking up the example tickets to improve them.

22. References
Neider, Julie - Basic Writing Skills for The Support Professional (HDI Focus Book)
Muns, Ron –The Call Ticket “Long Description” (Muns Report, Vol. 5 No. 11)

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