Myth Busters: Why leaders should love high support tickets

When there are high support tickets in any organization, it is always a cause for concern amongst leaders. It makes us believe the customers are angry and they want to churn or that you haven't done something well and they are unsatisfied with the experience. It's easy to have that perception in your organization without any data to back it up.

The first step is to look at the data and see what high support ticket numbers are telling us. Support tickets can be an indication of a variety of things, such as

1. The top categories of issues the users are facing

2. The overall user sentiment

3. Impact on churn and expansion

Involve.ai took a closer look at support ticket data from several organizations and found some interesting insights. In some cases, the higher the support tickets, the more churn there was. This made sense because it showed that the customers were not happy and they were trying to reach out for help.

However, in other cases, the opposite was true. The higher the support tickets, the more renewal and expansion opportunities were created. This was especially true in categories that were not critical.

So what does this tell us? High support ticket numbers are not always a bad thing. Sometimes, it can indicate that users are trying to reach out and get help. And in other cases, it can indicate user engagement, motivation, and intent to use your services.

It's essential to look at the data and see what high support ticket numbers tell us. Only then can we make informed decisions about what to do next.

The study found that support tickets have a threshold depending on the maturity of the customer. The cyclicity of support tickets and the customer life cycle stage impact churn as a compound variable (To be discussed in an upcoming blog). In this example below, you can see the cyclicity of support tickets for customers that churned; though still existent, the volume is much lower as opposed to healthy customers.

Churned Customers

Active Customers

So what does this tell us? High support ticket numbers are not always a bad thing. Sometimes, it can indicate that users are trying to reach out and get help. And in other cases, it can indicate user engagement, motivation & intent to use your services.

It's important to look at the data and see what high support ticket numbers tell us. Only then can we make informed decisions about what to do next.