How To Track And Interpret Open Ticket Count

By Edward J. Mana, Chief Technologist, Technology on Demand, ASCII Group Member Since 2011

When it comes to service tickets, there are several metrics to consider; one of them is open ticket count. An important goal as a managed services provider (MSP) is to have the open ticket count be as low as possible. Stated simply, the open ticket count is work not finished. However, work not finished could occur for a plethora of reasons.

Before we dive into that, let’s look at tracking ticket counts. You can’t measure what you don’t track. If you have no ticketing system in place, get one going immediately. Depending on your particular need, you may opt for a free ticketing software solution or a full-blown PSA (professional services automation) tool. In our company we use a PSA to track and manage our service tickets in addition to running the rest of our business.

Most ticketing systems allow you to easily determine whether a ticket is open or closed. For us, our PSA does this by showing a date and time the ticket opened and subsequently closed. We can look at these on an on-screen list or built-in dashboard to see immediately what tickets are open and how many, and can also print these as reports.

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