When everything is urgent, nothing is. Small support teams often work through tickets in the order they arrive, which means a customer who cannot log in waits behind someone asking about gift wrapping. Clear priorities fix that without adding headcount.

Keep it to three or four levels

More levels create more arguments about which one applies. A simple set works for most teams:

Urgent: the customer cannot use what they paid for, or money is at risk. Examples: cannot log in, payment taken twice, order sent to the wrong address.
High: a real problem with a workaround, or a time-sensitive request. Examples: a damaged item, a delivery due tomorrow.
Normal: most questions and requests.
Low: suggestions, general feedback, nice-to-haves.

Write down what each level means

Give each priority a one-line definition and two or three examples, in a place the whole team can see. New team members will use it daily, and it ends most debates.

Set response targets you can actually meet

A response target is how quickly a customer hears back, not how quickly the issue is solved. For a small team during business hours, something like this is realistic:

Urgent: within 1 hour.
High: within 4 hours.
Normal: within 1 business day.
Low: within 3 business days.

It is better to meet a modest target every time than to promise minutes and miss.

Assign tickets automatically

Tickets that sit unassigned get missed. Automatic assignment, for example sharing new tickets across whoever is available or sending a category to the person who knows it best, means every ticket has an owner from the start.

Keep urgent issues from getting buried

Sort the queue by priority, then age, not by age alone.
Check urgent tickets at set times during the day, not only when someone remembers.
Let anyone on the team raise a ticket's priority when they spot a problem.
Review tickets that missed their target each week and look for the cause.

Do not let priority become a complaint shortcut

Customers who shout should not jump the queue unless the problem itself is urgent. Judge the issue, not the tone. That is fairer to the patient customers who wait their turn.

Use categories as well as priorities

Categories such as "Delivery", "Billing" and "Technical" tell you what the ticket is about. Priorities tell you how soon it needs attention. Together they let you route work to the right person and see where problems cluster.

How IotaBot handles tickets

In IotaBot, conversations from website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram and email can become tickets with a status, a priority, a category and an owner. Auto-assignment shares new tickets across your team so none sit unowned. Read more on the ticketing system page.