There are a handful of open source ticketing systems available in the industry. But, choosing the best one for your business is a challenge. So, this article focuses on the best open source ticketing system in the market and its advanced features and specifications in detail.
What is a ticketing system?
A ticketing tool or system is designed to help organizations manage the issues faced by their customers in a systematic way. The queries submitted by customers are called ‘tickets’. In large organizations, there will be 2 parts in the ticketing system such as the internal support to provide support services to their internal employees, and external support provided to the end customers.
But, small to medium businesses only require a ticketing system for supporting end customers. Usually, the customers would connect through calls, SMS, emails, social media platforms, etc. An ideal ticketing system would be capable of gathering queries from multiple sources, which can be assigned to the concerned agent or expert in your team.
Also, there will be multiple tiers of assigning the tickets to agents or experts. A ticketing system must be capable of assigning the tickets from an internal employee to another. Usually, when a ticket is received, an agent or analyst will open it and try to solve it from their side with their deep knowledge of the product or service. If the problem needs to be solved from scratch or at the very basic level, it must be dealt with by an expert who built or worked on the real product. In such situations, it must be assigned internally from one person to another.
Now, let us check a few important factors that should be present in an ideal ticketing system.
Important factors of a ticketing system
1. Triggers
Triggering certain actions is essential to automate a few things in a ticketing system. There should be triggers to let agents know when a new ticket is raised by a customer. Also, it is important to trigger reminders at specific time intervals to agents for closing a ticket by solving the customer’s problem. There are many more uses for triggers to make your support system more efficient.
2. A perfect medium for communication
The main purpose of a ticketing system or help desk system is to connect with customers to hear their problems and provide solutions as soon as possible. As I have already mentioned, it should be able to gather queries from multiple resources like SMS, email, social media platforms, etc. Hence, an ideal ticketing system should be able to convert a message into tickets and assign it to the agents.
3. A platform to analyze and track performance
The performance of each agent must be tracked and recorded. This should include the number of tickets managed by an agent, the time duration they have taken to close a ticket, and the customers’ feedback on their service. Based on these data, you can understand the overall performance of your support ticketing system and the performance of agents, which will be useful to understand the weak areas to make improvements in the future.
So, it will be great if the ticketing system provides a detailed report option to track the performance easily.
4. Integration of knowledge base
Knowledge base and business case articles are important parts of customer support. You have to provide knowledge base articles and videos to customers for configuring and solving basic problems by themselves. Also, you can provide the related knowledge base articles as suggestions when they try to raise a ticket. This will help them to solve problems by themselves, and thereby, the overall number of tickets can be reduced.
These are the main factors that must be present in a basic ticketing system.
Based on your business requirements, the features and specifications may change or you may need additional specifications at any time. A ready-to-use help desk ticketing system is not always open for customization as per different business requirements.
So, if you need a ticketing system that is highly customizable based on your business requirements, you should go for an open source ticketing system.
What is an open source ticketing system?
Open source systems are available for extensive customization as per a user’s requirements. Their source code will be available to tweak and alter the system as and when required. There are open source ticketing systems in the industry, which are available to mold based on the nature of a business.
In this article, we are going to discuss the best open source ticketing system in the industry – Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible.
Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible
This open source help desk system is robust and highly flexible to accommodate any business requirements.
It can also be used as an out-of-the-box solution as it is already a fully-fledged help desk platform with advanced features. But, if you still require to make any modifications, you can contact the support team to give a detailed idea of your requirements. Based on your requirements they will add, remove or alter the features and specifications even from the basic code level!
You can go for this open source ticketing system without any doubt as it comes from the family of the prominent WordPress help desk plugin – WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System Plugin, and it inherits all the features available on this plugin.
Let us check the main features of this open source ticketing system in detail.
Works well on any website platform
It doesn’t matter if your site is built with WordPress, Wix, Shopify, or WooCommerce. You can seamlessly integrate this help desk system without any compatibility issues.
Data privacy and security
Your data will be safe and secure in this help desk system as no external or third-party systems can access your data. You can store all your data on your own server. With the exclusive ownership of your data, you do not have to worry about any data breaches or security issues.
Unlimited agent profiles
It does not matter how many agents you need to add to your help desk system. With any subscription plan of this open source help desk system, you can add unlimited agent profiles without any hidden charges or additional fees.
Efficient ticket management
This system allows you to receive tickets from multiple mediums like live chat, email, and so on by converting messages and queries into trackable tickets. Also, you can feature a contact form through which customers can raise tickets easily. The received tickets can be assigned to the agents in an intuitive dashboard.
Open for any third party integration
You can integrate any extension, plugins, live chat, or charge for support option without any barriers or compatibility issues. You can directly contact the support team for any kind of assistance.
Fit into any business environment
It could be a blog, an eCommerce store, a hospital, etc. This help desk system can be altered to fit into any business domain as its features are extensively customizable.
24/7 support
If you encounter any technical errors or glitches at any time, you can contact the support team and get it done as soon as possible.
Efficient knowledge base integration
Knowledge base and business case articles can be integrated with the support portal to make customers easily accessible to those documents. You can also give them suggestions when a customer tries to raise a query similar to that topic.
Managed hosting services
If you do not have enough time to spend on the management of your help desk system, you can hand it over to their team. So, you do not need to worry about the updates and ticket management as everything will be taken care of by the expert team of this system.
Reasonable pricing
This system comes with 3 subscription plans such as Starter, Pro, and Ultimate. The Starter plan starts at $10 which is very reasonable and affordable for a small to medium business.
Wrap Up
When you consider the advanced features and extensive customization options, this open source ticketing system is the best option for any business environment!
Further Reading:
- How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for Back Office IT support?
- How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools?
- How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for Consultation Services?
- How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for Doctors, Hospitals & Clinics?
- How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for eCommerce Support?