You may have heard we don’t like Tickets.

So deeply, in fact, that our motto has become: 🏴‍☠️ Death to the Ticket 🏴‍☠️

Now that we have your attention, we feel it’s important to explain our WHY before we can expect you to agree.

So please enjoy this 1st of 4-parts; a series in which each part dives deeper into 1 unique problem Tickets create for service.

Remember: Tickets are for waiting…

Problem 1: Tickets are terrible for communicating.

Most people talk on the phone, email and now chat on collaboration software like Slack or Teams. The ticket is something that is manually updated based on the conversation and misses the majority of the context. Phone calls don’t show up on Tickets. Emails attempt to tie in with add-ons like the email connector. That doesn’t work out well - every response to the original email thread makes a new Ticket. We all know that pain and suffering - we’re looking at you, (not so) closed loop.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Your customer has to drop what they’re doing
2. Customer sends an email or call, get a Ticket # in return and… wait
3. Customer blinks profusely at the screen since there is no easy way for them to self-serve (ideally). They leave.
4. Tech sends a follow up, “Are you available now?” No response.
5. Now everyone is waiting...

Impact

• CSAT / NPS scores decrease
• Higher Time to Response → Higher Time to Resolution → Cost per Ticket Increases → Profit Margin Decreases
• NEW Customer Effort Score Increases - A new metric that measures how hard it is for the customer to get service.

Why it matters?

Per MSP Resource, the top two steps that providers can take to improve customer relationships are:

1. Improve ease of doing business → 82% rate an “immediate” response as very important when they have a question
2. Improve communication → 70% of people say they have a more favorable view of vendors with proactive support

Solution 1: Threads are already where people communicate.

Pillar: Threads → It’s why we are called Thread!

Threads power real time & rich communication. They enable you to meet customers where they are. Chat is the most rich experience, but email and phone are fully integrated too. Your customers can chat with you as if you are an extension of their team, but you get all service controls in place. They won’t be able to message your best engineer directly, but they’ll be able to message your customers! Why take customers out of emails, when you can easily @mention the site contact to get approvals done super fast. The future of IT Service is not to bring people out of the communication channels but to service them in the channel of their choice. It’s Service Magic.

Benefits

• Customers can ask for help in any place they are - from Phone to Slack or Teams, and everything in between. They ask for help when things are low priority and not when they become problems.
• Technicians can get in touch with customers faster. They can schedule time to work on things faster, resolving things faster. They can reach approvers to get unblocked on any change management.

Features

• Threads work across Slack, Microsoft Teams, Chat on the Web, Desktop and Mobile, Phones, Email, and SMS & WhatsApp coming soon!
• Proactive Messages enable Technicians to reach out to your customers in Slack, Teams, Desktop or Mobile