What is a ticket group?
Ticket groups allow you to define the different types of tickets your team receives. This then allows Surfboard to forecast the number of contacts for each of your different ticket groups. You can then use this data to schedule your team ensuring you have the right people on the right tasks at the right time.
You can organise ticket groups in a number of different ways. Either by channel such as phone, email or chat or by the way your team is structured such as sales vs support tickets or even languages. Often these will reflect how your tickets are organised inside your customer service platform.
Covered in this guide
How do I create a ticket group?
Creating and editing ticket groups is simple. You’ll first need to map the correct tickets into the group and then define how the tickets are handled and your desired service targets.
Before you start you’ll need to connect your customer service platform(s). If you haven’t done that yet, read our guide.
Step 1: Filter tickets
First you need to filter the tickets that are included in the ticket group.
Go to Settings > Ticket groups
Click new ticket group
Name your ticket group. It can be helpful to match the names of your inboxes in your system.
Select the correct channel type:
Select real-time for channels like phone or live-chat
Select non real-time for channels like email or asynchronous chat/messaging
Next, select the connection you want to use from the dropdown.
Now, add filters to filter the tickets that are in this group. You can add as many conditions as you like:
Select the property you want to filter by. These are types of metadata that are attached to your tickets, e.g. tags, views or direction.
Select a condition for your filter, e.g. is, is any, contains.
Now select which value(s) you want the tickets to match. Surfboard pulls the list of available values direct from you ticket data. If there are no existing values then you can enter a value as free text.
💡 Types of conditions explained
💡 Types of conditions explained
Is - Includes all the tickets which have the value provided.
Is not - Includes all the tickets which do not have the value provided.
Is empty - Includes all the tickets who’s attribute is empty.
Is any - Includes all the tickets which have any of the values provided.
Is none - Includes all the tickets which do not have any of the values provided.
Contains any - Includes all the tickets which have any of the tags provided.
Does not contain any - Includes all the tickets which do not have any of the tags provided.
Contains all - Includes all the tickets which have all of the values provided
Does not contain all - Includes all the tickets which don’t have all of the values provided
Zendesk: Surfboard supports Zendesk views, making it easier to replicate your set-up, without the needs for multiple filters. Select 'view' from the property dropdown
Salesforce: Surfboard supports custom attributes. Select 'custom attributes' from the property dropdown and enter the name of the attribute. Custom attributes are usually in the format 'custom_attribute__c'.
Please note: Any values you create today, won't be available to use until the tomorrow when the latest data is collected from your customer service platform.
Step 2: Check that tickets match
As you add filters and conditions, the preview chart will begin to populate. This shows you how many tickets which match your conditions were received in the last 7 days. This allows you check you have the right tickets within the group by cross referencing with your customer service platform.
Step 3: Enter your staffing inputs
Now you need to enter your SLAs and staffing details in order to turn your ticket forecast into a staffing requirement.
Expected productivity
First, enter your average conversation time (ACT). You can read our in-depth guide on this here.
Now enter the concurrency number for this ticket group. This represents how many tickets surfers can work on at a time. For most channels this will be 1, but for chat it may be higher depending how you work.
Next, enter the shrinkage that is applicable for this ticket group. This should include external shrinkage (e.g. time off, sickness) and internal shrinkage (e.g. meetings, comfort breaks)
Desired SLA
Lastly, enter your service level agreement (SLA) as a first response time, e.g. I want to answer 90% of calls in 60s.
Write the % of tickets that should meet your target
Then write your target first response time in seconds.
Step 4: Save!
Now, you're all done. Hit save.
It will take a few minutes for Surfboard to process your new ticket group and to produce your new forecast. You can check on the progress of this with the status indicator on the ticket group page.
Head to the Forecast page to view your new ticket groups.
How do I use ticket groups?
Surfboard will generate forecasts for each of your ticket groups so you’ll be able to see exactly how many surfers you need for each ticket type. Your forecast will show you the amount of tickets you're expected to receive as well as the staffing required to meet your service targets.
In the forecast
You can view your forecast on the Forecast page. By default, your forecast will show the combined ticket volume. To view the forecast per ticket group, check the 'breakdown groups' checkbox in the toolbar.
In the schedule
You can also link ticket groups to activities, allowing you to track your scheduled coverage compared to the forecasted requirement. Read more
To track time-on-task
When ticket groups are linked to activities, you can track your surfers productivity and behaviour. Read more
In the Insights page
Surfboard analyses your schedules, comparing your scheduled time to the forecasted requirement, giving you insight into your shrinkage, productive time and arrival patterns. Read more
Troubleshooting
My ticket group volume is too low
If you’re seeing this message then your ticket group does not have enough ticket history or daily volume for Surfboard to forecast.
In order to accurately forecast your tickets Surfboard needs enough data to analyse and understand your ticket trends. We recommended to have at least 1 months worth of historic data for the groups tickets and that you received more than 3 tickets per hour on average to ensure accurate forecasting.
If you do have enough historic data and you know you receive more than 3 tickets per hour then check your conditions to ensure you have filtered your tickets correctly.
If you don’t your tickets are new or you don’t receive many tickets per hour we recommend either merging with another group to increase volume or you can schedule activities without using a forecast. See our guide on setting up activities.
The ticket group contains no tickets
If you see this message then your ticket group doesn't contain any tickets. First start by checking your conditions to ensure you have filtered your tickets correctly. You can use the preview chart to see how many tickets which match your conditions were received in the last 7 days.
If you continue to see this message, reach out to our team on live chat and we'll can assist further.
My forecast hasn’t updated
When you save a ticket group Surfboard will analyse your historical ticket data to generate a forecast for the next 12 weeks. Your ticket group will have a loading spinner when this is happening and normally takes around 30 seconds.
