Statuses
A ticket moves through:
Open → In Progress → Resolved → Closed
Resolved means the work is done; Closed means it is finished with. Keeping them separate lets you see what has been fixed but not yet confirmed back to the customer — the gap where people most often think they have replied and have not.
Priorities
Low · Medium · High · Critical
Set priority by the customer's impact, not by how irritating the ticket is to handle. The discipline worth keeping is that Critical means something is broken in production for a paying customer — if everything is critical, nothing is.
Keeping the queue honest
A queue only helps if it matches reality. The two habits that keep it true:
- Move a ticket to In Progress when you actually start it, not when you glance at it
- Mark it Resolved when the customer has what they needed, not when you have sent a reply
Writing the ticket
Record the exact wording of any error message, what the customer was doing, and when. A ticket saying "it does not work" costs two more exchanges before anyone can begin.
Before escalating
Check whether the answer is already in the manuals — most questions about how something behaves are covered there, and pointing a customer at the chapter also leaves them able to answer the next one themselves.