Ticket management in retail

The ticketing system for handling in-store issues

After my last article, where I explored the topic of tasks — namely, managing planned activities scheduled in advance — I’d now like to delve into another key theme in the retail world: ticket management. Tickets typically arise from unexpected events that can have a significant impact on sales.

The concept of a ticket encompasses several variables — from its categorisation based on priority and severity, to the operation or technology affected, and the head office staff or external supplier that needs to be involved.

A ticketing system must therefore take all these aspects into account to ensure an efficient and streamlined process workflow. It’s also important to consider that store staff are often on the move — raising tickets while working on the shop floor — whereas those handling the tickets are typically based at fixed workstations.

Ticket management: the essentials

These are the key elements we’ve introduced to make our ticketing system more effective:

• Categorisation of tickets by type and priority.
• Assignment of a deadline by which the ticket must be resolved.
• Head office console displaying all open tickets, including deadlines and priorities, to support supplier follow-ups. As each ticket includes information on the actions taken to resolve it, this data can also be used to assist in closing similar future tickets.
• Console for suppliers and store staff, who can only view and edit the tickets assigned to them.
• Workflow management: depending on the ticket type, an email is automatically sent to head office or the relevant supplier, who can then update the ticket from their own console — adding comments, changing its status and keeping it up to date.
• Dynamic attributes: we’ve found that ticket processing is often delayed due to missing information at the time of creation. Mapping the required fields and customising them based on the type of request ensures that tickets contain all necessary details and can be actioned immediately without further steps.
• Mobile app for opening tickets on the move, guided by the dynamic attribute prompts.

How retailers benefit from ticket management

So far, we’ve focused on tickets related to technology issues — but that’s not the only use case. In fact, by leveraging all their components, tickets can also be applied to other areas such as:

• managing claims related to non-conformities
• direct communication with the relevant internal office
• raising requests to maintenance providers for interventions on faulty hardware
• handling customer complaints, and more

At Aton, we recognise that ticket management is a process as complex as it is essential to the business. That’s why we continuously evolve our ticketing solution, with the aim of making our customers’ operations even more seamless. Among the latest developments, we’ve decided to introduce Artificial Intelligence to:

• Analyse ticket history to speed up the resolution of recurring cases and identify critical situations
• Introduce chatbots in stores for troubleshooting and How-To queries
• Qualify tickets and assign them to the appropriate person
• Implement AI-powered engines to automatically resolve certain types of tickets

Tasks and tickets are processes which, if managed effectively through technology, can be streamlined and accelerated—leading to an improvement in the quality of work for People and a tangible impact on customer Prosperity, achieved by optimising productive time and preventing sales disruptions.

In our upcoming articles, we will continue to discuss process innovation—so stay tuned!