The Power of BI in the Freshdesk Support Ticket System

Team Boldsign
Bold BI
Published in
7 min readNov 14, 2023
The Power of BI in the Freshdesk Support Ticket System

Efficient support ticket management is crucial for any customer-centric organization, and the integration of BI and Freshdesk can enhance these operations. This blog explores fundamental approaches, essential tools, and proven methodologies for leveraging the power of BI in the Freshdesk support ticket system, offering insights for better support ticket management.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is a set of strategies and technologies for collecting, storing, and analyzing data from business operations and other sources to improve decision-making. BI tools and applications can help businesses identify trends, patterns, and outliers in their data, which can then be used to make better decisions about everything from marketing and sales to product development and customer service.

How to use BI to identify and resolve common support issues

BI possesses the ability to discern and address frequent support problems in numerous ways.

  • Identify the most common support issues: BI tools can be used to analyze support ticket data to identify the most common support issues. This information can then be used to prioritize support resources and develop targeted solutions.
  • Identify trends in support issues: BI tools can be used to identify trends in support issues over time. This information can be used to predict future support needs and develop proactive solutions.
  • Uncovering the underlying causes of support problems: BI tools can analyze support ticket data to determine the root causes of support problems. These conclusions can then be utilized to prevent more issues from arising.
  • Monitoring the resolution of support problems: BI tools can track the process of support ticket resolution over time. This data can highlight areas where support processes can be enhanced.
  • Spotting support ticket patterns: BI can analyze support ticket data to reveal trends like the most frequent support issues, peak times, and popular support channels. Armed with this data, your support team can boost its efficiency.
  • Ranking support tickets: BI is capable of ranking support tickets based on factors such as issue severity.
  • Crafting a more customer-focused support experience: BI can help support teams understand customer needs and find ways to enhance the support experience. For instance, BI can identify the most frequent customer complaints, enabling you to proactively address them.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a popular customer support software package that streamlines communication across channels. It offers features such as ticket management, automation, and analytics for businesses of all sizes to enhance customer satisfaction and support team efficiency.

Integrating Freshdesk with a BI tool

Integrating Freshdesk with BI tools empowers you to analyze support ticket data effectively. The following are the steps for integrating Freshdesk with BI tools:

  • Identify objectives and requirements: Begin by defining your objectives for implementing BI with Freshdesk. Determine what specific insights and improvements you want to achieve.
  • Choose the right BI tool: Select a BI tool that is compatible with Freshdesk and can meet your specific business needs.
  • Access Freshdesk API key: Obtain API access to your Freshdesk account to serve as authentication credentials for your BI tool.
  • Data extraction and integration: Using your chosen BI tool, connect to the Freshdesk API and establish regular data extraction processes to retrieve support ticket data. Define the data sources and specify the data you want to extract.
  • Transform and cleanse data: Prepare your data for analysis within the BI tool. Also, address issues like missing data, duplicates, and inconsistent formats.
  • Build dashboards and reports: Design BI dashboards and reports that align with your support ticket system goals. Utilize the visualization capabilities of your BI tool to create charts, graphs, and tables that represent your support ticket metrics effectively.
  • Automate reporting: Set up automated reporting schedules to ensure that your support ticket metrics are regularly analyzed and reported.
  • Share insights: Ensure that your BI tool allows for easy sharing of dashboards and reports. Share them with relevant team members to ensure everyone has access to the same visuals and then discuss all of your insights.

Now, let’s explore the benefits of analyzing Freshdesk data using Business Intelligence to revolutionize your customer support operations.

The benefits of analyzing Freshdesk data using BI

Analyzing Freshdesk data using BI offers a multitude of advantages for customer support operations:

  • Enhanced decision-making: BI tools can transform raw data from Freshdesk into meaningful insights. This helps in making data-driven decisions related to customer support, resource allocation, and performance improvement.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Data-Driven Decision-Making
  • Enhanced Customer service: Analyzing Freshdesk data can provide insights into customer behavior, ticket resolution times, and common issues. This information can be used to enhance customer service, prioritize urgent tickets, and provide quicker and more effective solutions to customers.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Enhanced Customer Experience
  • Optimized Resource Allocation: By analyzing data on ticket volume and complexity, organizations can optimize resource allocation, ensuring that the right agents are handling the right types of tickets and that workloads are balanced effectively.
Optimized Resource Allocation
Optimized Resource Allocation
  • Cost Reduction: BI analysis can help reduce operational costs by identifying inefficiencies in the customer support process. For example, it can highlight areas where automation or self-service options can be implemented to reduce the workload on support agents.
Cost Reduction
Cost Reduction

BI tools often provide data visualization capabilities, such as dashboards and reports, making it easier for support managers and agents to grasp and communicate important insights quickly. Let’s see how we can use BI dashboards and reports to track and analyze support ticket data.

Using BI dashboards and reports to track and analyze support ticket data

BI dashboards track support ticket data, offering real-time insight into performance metrics and KPIs. Here are some useful support metrics:

  • Average Ticket Reply Time: These metrics show the average amount of time it takes for support agents to respond to and resolve a ticket. One calculates the time from when a ticket is created to the first response (FRT) by the support team. The others calculate average times for all responses and resolutions.
Average ticket reply time
Average ticket reply time
  • Tickets by Source: This metric categorizes tickets based on their point of origin. The tickets have been created via email, social media, the website, phone calls, etc.
A widget showing tickets by source
A widget showing tickets by source
  • Tickets by Status: This pie chart divides all the tickets by their statuses.
A widget showing tickets by status
A widget showing tickets by status
  • Tickets by Day of Week: This metric shows the distribution of tickets received on different days of the week. It helps in identifying the busiest days for the support team.
A widget showing tickets by day of week
A widget showing tickets by day of week
  • Resolved vs. Unresolved Tickets by Priority: This metric compares the number of resolved and unresolved tickets, further categorizing them by their priority level.
Resolved vs. unresolved tickets by priority
Resolved vs. unresolved tickets by priority
  • CSAT: CSAT stands for customer satisfaction score. This metric displays customers’ satisfaction with the support they received. It is usually calculated from customer survey responses after a ticket is resolved.
Customer satisfaction score
Customer satisfaction score
  • Resolved Tickets by Group: This metric shows the number of tickets solved by different groups in a customer support department.
A widget showing resolved tickets by group
A widget showing resolved tickets by group

Leveraging BI dashboards and reports enable the effective tracking and analysis of support ticket data, facilitating the optimization of customer support operations and overall efficiency. By visualizing crucial metrics, measures can be taken to address support issues and enhance the quality of a company’s customer service.

For example, the Customer Ticket Traffic Management Dashboard offers a comprehensive view of support ticket data, with metrics like response times, ticket volume, and resolution rates. It helps identify customer pain points, streamline support workflows, and promote timely resolution of issues.

Customer Ticket Traffic Management Dashboard
Customer Ticket Traffic Management Dashboard

The BI dashboards and reports for support ticket data, like those developed using Bold BI, offer intuitive visualizations that simplify the tracking and analysis of support ticket metrics. This powerful tool streamlines data interpretation, improving operational efficiency and accuracy for support teams.

In conclusion, efficient support ticket management is vital for customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and resource optimization. Integrating Freshdesk with business intelligence software suits growing businesses, multichannel support providers, and companies looking to improve their support systems.

Originally published at https://www.boldbi.com on November 15, 2023.

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