IT request tickets you submit typically come in different priorities. General questions or advice are usually low-priority, while the majority of tickets are medium priority and are dealt with in a short time.
But sometimes, a ticket can’t wait. These are critical tickets, and we have a special workflow for them. Let’s review what makes a ticket critical, and how we deal with them to get vital problems fixed as quickly as possible.
What is a Critical Ticket?
At Houk Consulting, we generally define a critical ticket as anything that prevents a large number of staff from performing their day-to-day duties or the prevention of a time sensitive function of a client’s business. Possible examples include:
- The internet service drops out across your building.
- A server goes down, preventing access to shared data.
- Your power goes out.
- An assembly line or other mission-critical resource stops working.
- Payroll needs to go out and a process is not functioning.
How Are Critical Tickets Created?
Thanks to our automated monitoring, we’re alerted to many critical issues before anyone submits a ticket. If we can’t reach your server, or your internet service goes out, we get an alert that we turn into a critical ticket.
Should you report a critical issue, such as a problem with a critical function of your business, we can categorize the ticket as critical in our system in just a few clicks.
What Happens With a Critical Ticket?
When we create a critical ticket, it immediately alerts all technicians via email. This way, everyone is aware of the issue in case you contact us with further information. The IT Manager assigns the ticket to the appropriate technician, who immediately begins working to find a resolution.
If needed, the assigned technician will reach out to his coworkers for additional manpower on resolving the issue. This may involve sending someone to troubleshoot the issue onsite if needed.
Whenever a technician posts an update to the ticket, our system automatically sends an email to the person who submitted the ticket as well as the primary contact for your company. This ensures that everyone involved knows the latest status of our work on the ticket as soon as it happens.
Closing a Critical Ticket
We will always confirm that a critical ticket has been resolved before closing it. This usually involves confirmation from your internet service provider that service has been restored, testing critical equipment as functional, or similar. All technicians and employees involved in the ticket receive an email letting them know the issue has been fixed.
At the end of the month, you’ll often see critical tickets covered in the Alerts section of our monthly reports. This includes details of any automated alerts, many of which result in critical tickets being created. For each item, you’ll see a brief description of the issue and what we did to resolve it.
We’ve created this critical ticket workflow so we’re able to respond to critical events properly. Any issue that keeps a large number of your staff from working receives our highest priority and we’ll work to fix it until it’s resolved to your satisfaction. Thanks to our preventative maintenance, major issues happen relatively infrequently. However, whenever your internet drops out or something else unexpected happens, we’ll be there right away.