We've gone through a couple of helpdesk ticketing offerings, including one which was pretty much customized for us.
I've been the main driver of changes, because I like ticket managers -- I have the memory of a sieve, and with a good ticketing system I don't have to remember. The system does. But due to problems with the various systems, my co-workers have been more reluctant to use them.
There are two key things I've learned:
First, Management MUST use the tool and ENFORCE its use in ALL cases. These things are driven from the top down. Any kind of task management will get in the way of getting things done, and if techs are under pressure to make customers happy, they'll take practically any shortcut available to them.
Second, It has to be simple. Management likes to have stages and phases and approvals and categorizations and metrics and integrations with asset histories and all that (sorry) crap. But all that stuff gets in the way.
It has to be trivial to open a new ticket. Not click-click-type-type-click-click-select-drag-click-click-type-type-type-type-click. Systems that let customers open tickets by email win for me, especially when emails can be parsed to pre-populate some of the stuff management like categories or queues.
It has to be trivial to update a ticket. Here email-based tools fall down, because most users seem to like the top-post-and-quote-the-whole-[bad-word-deleted]-thing. This makes histories hard to read.
It has to be trivial to change an owner/operator.
It has to be trivial to close a ticket, but techs should be encouraged to write up how it was closed in the interests of building a knowledge base.
The bottom line: it has to make it trivial to do the right thing, or there will be resistance against it.
