The Ticket Routing Problem
Support teams waste hours manually reading and routing tickets. Customers wait longer. Agents handle issues outside their expertise. Urgent problems get buried in queues.
Automated classification solves this instantly.
How Ticket Classification Works
Incoming Ticket
"I've been charged twice for my subscription this month. Order #12345. Please refund the duplicate charge ASAP."
Automatic Classification
- Category: Billing
- Subcategory: Duplicate Charge
- Priority: High (financial impact)
- Sentiment: Frustrated
- Department: Billing Team
Automatic Actions
- Route to Billing queue
- Flag as high priority
- Attach order lookup
- Send acknowledgment template
Common Classification Categories
By Issue Type
- Billing: Charges, refunds, subscription changes
- Technical: Bugs, errors, how-to questions
- Account: Login issues, password resets, profile updates
- Shipping: Tracking, delays, missing packages
- Returns: Refund requests, exchanges, RMA
- Sales: Pricing questions, quotes, upgrades
- Feedback: Suggestions, complaints, praise
By Urgency
- Critical: System down, security issues, payment failures
- High: Revenue impact, angry customers, time-sensitive
- Normal: Standard requests, questions
- Low: General feedback, feature requests
By Customer Segment
- Enterprise: Large accounts needing white-glove service
- Premium: Paid customers with SLA commitments
- Standard: Regular customers
- Trial: Prospective customers evaluating the product
Building Your Classifier
Step 1: Export Sample Tickets
Pull 100-500 resolved tickets from your helpdesk. Include the ticket text and how it was ultimately categorized.
Step 2: Define Categories
List your routing categories. TinyModels can suggest categories based on your sample data, or you can specify exactly what you need.
Step 3: Train the Model
Upload your samples or let AI generate training data based on your category descriptions. Fine-tuning takes minutes.
Step 4: Integrate
Connect to your helpdesk via API. Most teams start with a parallel run—classify tickets automatically but let agents verify before full automation.
Integration Examples
Zendesk
Connect TinyModels to Zendesk via webhooks. When a new ticket arrives, classify it automatically and update ticket fields with the predicted category and priority. Route to the appropriate department group based on classification.
Intercom
Use Intercom webhooks to classify new conversations. Tag conversations with the predicted intent and auto-assign to the right team based on classification results.
Measuring Impact
Before Classification
- Average routing time: 15 minutes
- Misrouted tickets: 23%
- First response time: 4.2 hours
After Classification
- Average routing time: Under 1 second
- Misrouted tickets: 4%
- First response time: 1.1 hours
Advanced Patterns
Multi-Label Classification
Some tickets need multiple tags. The classifier can return multiple labels with confidence scores, allowing you to route to Billing while cc'ing Technical Support when tickets span categories.
Escalation Detection
Train a separate classifier for escalation signals:
- Legal threats
- Social media mentions
- Executive complaints
- Repeated contacts
Language Detection
Automatically route non-English tickets to appropriate agents or translation queues.
Start Automating
Every minute a ticket sits unrouted is a minute your customer waits. Build a classifier that understands your support categories and routes tickets instantly.
Describe your ticket categories. We'll build the classifier.
