ticket-triage

/ticket-triage

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.

Categorize, prioritize, and route an incoming support ticket or customer issue. Produces a structured triage assessment with a suggested initial response.

Usage

/ticket-triage <ticket text, customer message, or issue description>

Examples:

• /ticket-triage Customer says their dashboard has been showing a blank page since this morning
• /ticket-triage "I was charged twice for my subscription this month"
• /ticket-triage User can't connect their SSO — getting a 403 error on the callback URL
• /ticket-triage Feature request: they want to export reports as PDF

Workflow

1. Parse the Issue

Read the input and extract:

• Core problem: What is the customer actually experiencing?
• Symptoms: What specific behavior or error are they seeing?
• Customer context: Who is this? Any account details, plan level, or history available?
• Urgency signals: Are they blocked? Is this production? How many users affected?
• Emotional state: Frustrated, confused, matter-of-fact, escalating?

2. Categorize and Prioritize

Using the category taxonomy and priority framework below:

• Assign a primary category (bug, how-to, feature request, billing, account, integration, security, data, performance) and an optional secondary category
• Assign a priority (P1–P4) based on impact and urgency
• Identify the product area the issue maps to

3. Check for Duplicates and Known Issues

Before routing, check available sources:

• ~~support platform: Search for similar open or recently resolved tickets
• ~~knowledge base: Check for known issues or existing documentation
• ~~project tracker: Check if there's an existing bug report or feature request

Apply the duplicate detection process below.

4. Determine Routing

Using the routing rules below, recommend which team or queue should handle this based on category and complexity.

5. Generate Triage Output

## Triage: [One-line issue summary]

**Category:** [Primary] / [Secondary if applicable]
**Priority:** [P1-P4] — [Brief justification]
**Product area:** [Area/team]

### Issue Summary
[2-3 sentence summary of what the customer is experiencing]

### Key Details
- **Customer:** [Name/account if known]
- **Impact:** [Who and what is affected]
- **Workaround:** [Available / Not available / Unknown]
- **Related tickets:** [Links to similar issues if found]
- **Known issue:** [Yes — link / No / Checking]

### Routing Recommendation

6. Offer Next Steps

After presenting the triage:

• "Want me to draft a full response to the customer?"
• "Should I search for more context on this issue?"
• "Want me to check if this is a known bug in the tracker?"
• "Should I escalate this? I can package it with /customer-escalation."

Category Taxonomy

Assign every ticket a primary category and optionally a secondary category:

Category Determination Tips

• If the customer reports both a bug and a feature request, the bug is primary
• If they can't log in due to a bug, category is Bug (not Account) — root cause drives the category
• "It used to work and now it doesn't" = Bug
• "I want it to work differently" = Feature request
• "How do I make it work?" = How-to
• When in doubt, lean toward Bug — it's better to investigate than dismiss

Priority Framework

P1 — Critical

Criteria: Production system down, data loss or corruption, security breach, all or most users affected.

• The customer cannot use the product at all
• Data is being lost, corrupted, or exposed
• A security incident is in progress
• The issue is worsening or expanding in scope

SLA expectation: Respond within 1 hour. Continuous work until resolved or mitigated. Updates every 1-2 hours.

P2 — High

Criteria: Major feature broken, significant workflow blocked, many users affected, no workaround.

• A core workflow is broken but the product is partially usable
• Multiple users are affected or a key account is impacted
• The issue is blocking time-sensitive work
• No reasonable workaround exists

SLA expectation: Respond within 4 hours. Active investigation same day. Updates every 4 hours.

P3 — Medium

Criteria: Feature partially broken, workaround available, single user or small team affected.

• A feature isn't working correctly but a workaround exists
• The issue is inconvenient but not blocking critical work
• A single user or small team is affected
• The customer is not escalating urgently

SLA expectation: Respond within 1 business day. Resolution or update within 3 business days.

P4 — Low

Criteria: Minor inconvenience, cosmetic issue, general question, feature request.

• Cosmetic or UI issues that don't affect functionality
• Feature requests and enhancement ideas
• General questions or how-to inquiries
• Issues with simple, documented solutions

SLA expectation: Respond within 2 business days. Resolution at normal pace.

Priority Escalation Triggers

Automatically bump priority up when:

• Customer has been waiting longer than the SLA allows
• Multiple customers report the same issue (pattern detected)
• The customer explicitly escalates or mentions executive involvement
• A workaround that was in place stops working
• The issue expands in scope (more users, more data, new symptoms)

Routing Rules

Route tickets based on category and complexity:

Duplicate Detection

Before creating a new ticket or routing, check for duplicates:

1. Search by symptom: Look for tickets with similar error messages or descriptions
2. Search by customer: Check if this customer has an open ticket for the same issue
3. Search by product area: Look for recent tickets in the same feature area
4. Check known issues: Compare against documented known issues

If a duplicate is found:

• Link the new ticket to the existing one
• Notify the customer that this is a known issue being tracked
• Add any new information from the new report to the existing ticket
• Bump priority if the new report adds urgency (more customers affected, etc.)

Auto-Response Templates by Category

Bug — Initial Response

How-to — Initial Response

Feature Request — Initial Response

Billing — Initial Response

Security — Initial Response

Triage Best Practices

1. Read the full ticket before categorizing — context in later messages often changes the assessment
2. Categorize by root cause, not just the symptom described
3. When in doubt on priority, err on the side of higher — it's easier to de-escalate than to recover from a missed SLA
4. Always check for duplicates and known issues before routing
5. Write internal notes that help the next person pick up context quickly
6. Include what you've already checked or ruled out to avoid duplicate investigation
7. Flag patterns — if you're seeing the same issue repeatedly, escalate the pattern even if individual tickets are low priority~~