The document outlines a structured approach to creating a help desk ticket classification scheme through six steps: collecting data, defining review criteria, evaluating past tickets, arranging categories, training staff, and executing the classification scheme. It emphasizes the importance of a systematic ticket categorization for improving incident resolution, decision-making, and reporting. Key classifications include incident resolution, service requests, and training inquiries, organized into a three-tier system based on type, service, and product.

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Help Desk Ticket Categories: CREATE Help Desk ticket
classification - IT-Toolkits.org
Collect – Sample of 3 months of Help Desk ticket data.
Review – Define your review ticket classification criteria.
Evaluate – Apply your new Help Desk ticket classification scheme to your previous ticket data.
Arrange – Help Desk ticket separation by categories.
Training – Ensure your staff understands the new Help Desk ticket classification scheme.
Execute – Implement your new Help Desk ticket classification scheme into production.
CREATE Step 1 Collect – Help Desk ticket data collection
A Help Desk industrySTANDARD is for every customer contact handled by your Help Desk, a ticket
must be created. While your Help Desk ticket classification scheme may be disorganized at this point,
your ticket data will hold a wealth of useful data. During the collect phase, you should query your
ticket application for 6 months of previous ticket data. It is important to capture, if available, the
following data.
1. Ticket number
2. Ticket title or short description
3. Ticket summary
4. Created and resolution dates
5. Ticket classification
6. Ticket detail
7. Ticket resolution
Once you have this detail, export it into a spreadsheet.
CREATE Step 2 Review – Define your review criteria.
All tickets captured in the collect phase will be evaluated in a later phase using the review criteria you
will define in this step. Your goal in this step is to create a high level way to sort the tickets into logical
groups or buckets. To begin, you must understand how help desk ticket categories will truly help meet

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your business needs. Below are the common reasons to categorize tickets.
Improve the ability to solve the issue on first contact (FCR).
Present knowledge base articles based on categories
Initiate decision tree scripts
Search similarly categorized tickets for a potential resolution
Display knownERRORS from problem management
Assist with setting the correct ticket priority level.
Raise priority by fragile or critical systems
Help escalate tickets based on skills, geography, department, or other company specific factors.
Improve incident trending and reporting.
Ultimately to assist management with organizational, financial, and training decisions.
Most classification schemes will have three levels. Since this is the initial classification, you should
avoid building a classification scheme to establish root cause. Root cause classification should be
handled in the Resolution stage. Also if your classification scheme is too complicated or granular, the
Help Desk Agent may incorrectly use the wrong category or just quit and use the “other” category.
ITSM Solutionsstates “Classification schemes and their strategies for establishing types and
categories will vary from organization to organization.” My recommendation is to user a Help Desk
ticket classification scheme that is based on Type / Service / Product Name.
Type – Top level Help Desk ticket classification – At the top level or bucket, you should focus on
the type of issue that is being reported such as something broken, something needs to be changed
and general questions or training issues. A fourth type can be added for Security or Event
Management alert related tickets.
Incident Resolution – Incident resolution is when something the customer current has is broken
and needs to be fixed. These are also called Help Desk break/fix tickets.
Service Request – A Service Request is a move, add or change, which relocates, changes or
installs some equipment or service. This could be an installation of an application, purchasing
hardware or providing additional access.
Question/training – This type is for general customer questions, explaining something or providing
how to training.
Service – Second level Help Desk ticket classification
Service is a major business service inside a corporation that is measured in a scorecard for example.
This allows reporting such as availability, incident trends, performance data and such. The general
rule is you should only have eight to twelve services to selection from. A few of the major services are
identified below.
Enterprise Applications
Desktop
Telecom

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Printing
Mobile Device
Infrastructure
Security
Account Management
Product name – Third level Help Desk ticket classification
Product name is the specific product name such as SharePoint, Exchange or Adobe. This allows
reporting on specific application, service or component names, incident trends, performance data and
such. The general rule is you could have more than 10 products to selection from.
To summarize step 2 review, define your review criteria into a top tier of incident, service request, and
training or questions. Next identify major Help Desk service categorizes such as Desktop, Telecom,
Printing, and Mobile Device.Finally identify the product name for each of the services such as Adobe,
Internet Explorer, iPhone, and Network Printer. Create a spreadsheet with all of the combinations. See
the following help desk category examples.
CREATE Step 3 Evaluate – Adding your proposed 3 tier classification structure to previous
ticket data.
Now that you have your ticket review classification criteria, it is time to apply the new tier 1, tier 2, and
tier 3 classifications these to your historical ticket data. Create three new columns in your
spreadsheet called tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. Review each Help Desk ticket description and summary.
Have the evaluation team decide is it something that is broken (incident resolution), a move add
change (Service Request), or a training question to assign the correct tier 1 classification. Next the
review team should decide what tier 2 service this ticket fits under. Finally identify the product name in
the tier 3 field.
CREATE Step 4 Arrange – Help Desk ticket separation by categories
The arrange step is very important final review process to ensure the correct Help Desk ticket
classification. Sort the spreadsheet by tier 1 categories. Then have the team answer the following
questions;
Should the tier 1 incident resolution be separated into incident resolution and security
classifications? Many companies focused on tight security may want to separate security related
incidents to follow a different ticket handling flow path.

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Sort the spreadsheet by tier 2 categories. Move each of the tier 2 category groups to a separate
spreadsheet tab. Then the focus of the arrange step is to ask the following questions.
Is the tier 2 selection of Enterprise Applications too large and unwieldy? If so you may consider
separating this classification into internal and 3 party applications.
Does the tier 2 categories accurately allow you to report on service?
Finally sort the spreadsheet by tier 3 categories. Move each of the tier 3 category groups to a
separate spreadsheet tab. Then the focus of the arrange step is to ask the following question;
Are your tier 3 classifications too high of level. Example are you defining tickets with the tier 3
classification of Adobe or should you separate these into smaller tier 3 classifications such as
Adobe Professional, Adobe Dream Weaver and such?
CREATE Step 5 Training – Ensure your Help Desk support staff understands the new Help
Desk ticket classification scheme.
Implementing a new Help Desk ticket classification scheme without properly training the Information
Technology support staff would create confusion, inefficiencies and result in implementation
problems. Build a Help Desk recommends that Help Desk Agents receive access to a Help Desk
application test environment with the new classification structure implemented. This will allow the staff
to understand the new structure. Also we recommend to have quick reference charts available at
each Help Desk Agent workspace to allow the agents the ability to refer to the charts as needed.
CREATE Step 6 Execute – Implement your new Help Desk ticket classification scheme into
production.
Remember the Help Desk Agent has limited information during the initial contact with the customer.
Keep the Help Desk ticket classification based on what the customer can tell you and not the root
cause. Creating a Help Desk ticket classification scheme that is quick and efficient for the Help Desk
Agent to create a ticket is as important as ensuring your reporting team can build meaningful reports
based on ticket classifications.
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