Get to know the lifecycle of an Inbox ticket
An Inbox ticket provides your agents with a detailed record of a conversation between your organization and a customer. In this article, we'll discuss the below topics:
Ticket creation
A ticket is created when a customer sends a message to your company via a channel that's been connected to Inbox, such as WhatsApp or SMS.
This new ticket will be added to a queue in Inbox, where it will stay until an agent accepts it. The screenshot below shows a ticket waiting in a queue.
When a ticket arrives in a queue, a notification is sent to all online agents to let them know that a customer is waiting for help.
For more advanced skill-based routing, you can segment incoming tickets into separate queues, so only eligible agents will be notified. Take a look at this article to see how.
By default, a ticket will include the following information:
Your customer's message
The date and time that the message was sent
Your customer's contact details
The channel they've used to contact you
Previous conversations (if they've contacted you before)
Alternative channels of communication (if they've contacted you before on a different channel)
You can also use built-in Inbox automation to add additional information to incoming tickets:
Language recognition to identify what language your customer is speaking
Sentiment analysis to detect your customer's mood
Agents can manually add tags to tickets as they talk to customers. Find out more under Working on a ticket.
Accepting a ticket
To accept a ticket, just click on the ticket in the queue. It will automatically move to 'Assigned to you', ready for you to start working on.
If a customer has been in touch with you before, the full conversation history will be displayed in the ticket. To see it, just scroll up, or click on the customer’s name!
In the screenshot below, you can see what a ticket looks like once you have accepted it. You can also see the language of the message displayed as a tag, and the sentiment or mood displayed as both a tag and as an emoji.
If you decide that you can't work on that ticket, or if you accepted it by mistake, you can click Return to place the ticket back in the queue. This will prompt a notification to be sent to all online agents, just like when a new ticket arrives. When a ticket is returned, this is recorded in the conversation history.
Working on a ticket
Replying to a ticket
Once you have accepted a ticket to your personal queue, you can reply to the customer. Use the text field to chat with your customer by writing a response in the text field, or by using a canned reply. You can insert emojis by copy and pasting them into your message, and attach and send media by clicking on the attachment icon. To check what types of media are supported by each channel, take a look at the features table.
When you're ready, click Send to send your message!
Adding manual tagsReplying to a ticket
Agents can manually edit and add tags to tickets as they talk to customers. Tags are a good way to add more information and context to a ticket. For example, a tag can be added to explain why a customer has been in touch, which is useful for creating detailed reports.
Creating internal notes
Create internal notes to provide yourself and other agents with additional information, such as "Don't close this ticket until the customer replies".
You and other agents will be able to see what you've written, but your customer won't. Notes can't be deleted and will be included in the conversation history.
On the ticket itself, click on 'Add Note'
A pop up window will appear
Type your note and click on 'Save note'
The note will appear as a yellow message like below:
Switching channels
By default, your reply will be sent on the same channel that the customer used to contact you. For example, if the customer has contacted you via Messenger, your reply will be sent by Messenger.
You can switch your conversation to any available channel by selecting it in the drop-down menu.
Returning a ticket to the queue or assigning it to another agent
While working on a ticket, you might decide that you can no longer handle the customer’s inquiry. This could happen because your shift has ended and you need a colleague to continue working on the issue, or because you don’t have the required skills.
When this happens, you can choose to return the ticket to the queue by clicking Return in the top right-hand corner or to assign the ticket to another agent by clicking Assigned: You in the top left-hand corner, and selecting another agent.
Resolving a ticket
Once you've finished working on a ticket, click Resolve in the top right-hand corner of the ticket. This will move your ticket to the Resolved section of Inbox.
If you decide that a ticket needs to be reopened, or if you close it by mistake, simply click Open in the top right-hand corner of the ticket. This will reopen the ticket and allow you to start working on it again. If a ticket is reopened, this is recorded in the conversation history.
If you have resolved a ticket and the customer reaches out again, the new reply will open a new ticket in the queue.
NOTE: As you can only have one ticket per contact open at any time, you may find that trying to re-open a ticket causes a modal window to appear. This happens when another agent has picked up the ticket and is working on it. In this case, the modal will direct you to view the open ticket.
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