So, you’ve just installed your osTicket support software – what’s next?
As a popular tool for addressing customer concerns, osTicket brings inquiries created through email, phone, and the web together onto a simple, multi-user web interface. osTicket makes it easy to manage and organize customer support requests and responses. It enables you to address your customers’ requirements better and build fruitful, long-lasting relationships with them.
But before you can do all that, you must first set up the free ticketing system. Follow the steps below to ensure a smooth set up so that you can begin building better relationships with your clients instantly.
Before you can begin to use the full breadth of osTicket’s features, you must configure it using the admin panel.
The osTicket dashboard has two panels: (1) agent panel and (2) admin panel.
The agent panel displays received tickets based on agents (staff), departments, and help topics. Agents can respond to the ticket by typing it into the given box. They can also edit the ticket, change its status, change its owner, and merge tickets. It can also link, delete, and mark tickets as answered or unanswered.
The admin panel is reserved for individuals responsible for managing the ticketing system. It has two tabs: System Logs and Information. The System Logs tab shows any troubleshooting activity, while the Information tab describes the system on which osTicket is installed.
To set up osTicket, you must be logged into the admin panel, which can be accessed using the username and password created while installing the software.
You can set up your osTicket system with as many email addresses as required to handle your company’s communications. Emails from clients will be converted into support tickets that you can then manage in your ticketing system.
While setting up the email feature, you can:
osTicket allows you to create email templates for auto-responses, alerts, notices, and responses, ensuring that you do not draft a new email every time you get an inquiry.
You can set up your ticketing system to route incoming emails to the concerned department using piping and POP3/IMAP polling methods. The tickets will also be assigned a default priority when being routed.
You can enable incoming email fetching in the admin panel by going to settings, selecting email, and checking the box for email fetching.
While osTicket uses PHP Mail Function to send outgoing emails, this may cause the emails to go into the receiver’s spam. To prevent this, it is recommended that you use SMTP. You can set up SMTP by going into the settings in the admin panel.
Help topics will make it easier for your clients to submit support requests under appropriate headings. They will also help you streamline your operations, ensuring that requests are routed to the relevant departments.
You can create help topics in the admin panel by going to manage > add new help topics.
To make your and your customers’ lives easier, you can even create sub-topics within the help topics. For instance, for the help topic Salary/Payroll, you can add sub-topics including Late Disbursement, Incorrect Payout, and Other.
Tickets falling under specific help topics can be categorized by the departments responsible for addressing them. Employees of the relevant department will access the tickets received for issues falling under their department’s authority.
You can manage the categorization by the department under the Departments tab in the admin panel. Under this tab, you can also set up email templates for automatic responses and staff alerts to alert the departmental staff of a new ticket.
To regulate the level of access to the support requests of staff members, osTicket allows you to add employees to different departments. With this, they can access the tickets pertinent to their department. You can also group the staff accounts like admin or staff, giving them different access levels to the ticketing system.
Custom forms can be created to provide extra information associated with each help topic. The additional information simplifies the help topics for the clients. It may even solve their queries, no longer requiring a support request.
You can create custom forms in the admin panel by going to manage > forms.
Trusted by thousands of users in over 190 countries, osTicket is a free, open-source ticketing system to help you address customer queries and concerns. The software is based on the understanding that enduring, profitable relationships with clients and customers can only be built through effective redressing of their questions and complaints.
osTicket helps you answer your clients’ questions and address their problems quickly, swiftly, and efficiently. So, if you’ve made the first leap towards better customer service by downloading the software, the instructions above will help you get started right away.