This post contains tips on how to use and monitor tickets with on-hold status to keep customers updated and prevent outgoing tickets to third-parties from stalling.

Introduction

If you have ever marked a customer ticket as pending/solved because there is nothing else you could do while waiting for an item to be restocked or a third-party on a long summer break, this post is for you. If you have a ticket that has been left on-hold since Christmas 2021, this is an intervention.

Hold on... what is on-hold status?

On-hold is an internal ticket status for tickets that require input or resolution from a third party. It is ideal when you are checking with your shipping partner via side conversation, or with your finance team via child ticket.

It is disabled by default and you can enable it from ticket status, or status categories.

Why do I need to monitor it?

Whenever you are using on-hold status, your team is probably not in control of when the issue can be resolved, but is still liable to provide timely response to the customer or even adhere with a strict SLA. So, what can you do?

Level 1: Keep an eye on them using a view

Create a view for your on-hold tickets using the following steps.

1. In Admin Center, click Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Views.
2. Click Add view.
3. Enter On-hold tickets for the title.
4. (Optional) Enter a Description for the view.
5. (Optional) Select an option to determine Who has access:
   • Any agent, available to all agents.
   • Agents in specific groups, e.g. Support Managers.
   • Only you, available to you as a personal view.
6. Under Tickets must meet all of these conditions to appear in the view, Click Add condition.
   • Status category (or simply Status) > Is > On-hold

   

7. Set the formatting options:
   
   • Add as many columns as you wish as long as they sit comfortably in your view. It's always a good idea to add Next SLA breach. You may also want to keep an eye on latest update, and due date for Task tickets
   • Under Order by, I believe that Next SLA breach in Ascending order is the way to go for most views. Of course you need a defined SLA policy for it to be effective. However, many SLA policies have no active targets during on-hold status. In that case, I would sort by Latest update in Ascending order to prioritize any stagnant ticket.
     
8. Click Save.

   The view is created. It should look like the image below. For more tips on creating views, see this guide.
   
   

And voila! You have a simple and elegant way to keep an eye on on-hold tickets. It works great if you remember to do so all the time. Do you think we can do better? We certainly can.

Level 2: Remind the assignee regularly until resolution

Remind the assignee to check-in on the third-party for a response and perhaps refresh the customer to let them know you are still working on the ticket. For that we will use an automation and a trigger. Let's start with the automation:

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.
2. Select Add Automation.
3. Enter a title for your automation (e.g. Scheduling on-hold ticket reminder).
4. Add the following under Meet all of the following conditions:
   
   • Ticket: Status category (or simply status) > Is > On-hold
   • Ticket: Hours since update > (business) Greater than > 8
   • Ticket: Tags > Contains none of the following > onhold_reminder
5. Add the following action:
   • Ticket: Add tags > onhold_reminder
6. Save your new automation by clicking Create automation.
   
   

This, of course, will require you to have schedules configured and a assigned to each ticket.  Alternative, you can set a duration of 24 calendar hours. Feel free to set the duration between reminders according to your needs. Now let's add the trigger:

And there you go. Assignees of on-hold tickets will receive a daily email to remind them to follow up:

If you are like me, not a fan of email reminders, or if you want the whole group to keep an eye on those on-hold tickets, we can take this further by notifying a slack channel instead.

Level 3: Ping the group on slack daily.

After you have integrated slack with Zendesk, go to the channels that need to receive notifications and type /invite @zendesk.

We can modify the trigger that we have created earlier, or clone it. I would recommend cloning it using the following steps:

1. On the Triggers page, locate the trigger we set up earlier.
2. Hover your mouse over the trigger to display the options menu icon (vertical ellipsis).
3. Click the options menu icon and select Clone.
4. Modify the title and description to reflect that the notifications will target a specific channel.
5. Add a condition to limit the trigger to a specific group (e.g. Group > Is > Support)
   
   
6. Change the action from Email user to Notify Zendesk Integration > Slack integration
7. Select the channels that corresponds to the group you specified above (e.g. #support)
   Note that you will only see the channels you invited the app to.
8. Edit the notification header as needed and click Create trigger.
   
   

Once again, the trigger is added to the bottom of the Notifications category. If you chose to keep the email notification category as well, you will need to reorder your triggers:

1. On the Triggers page, click Edit order in the upper right.
2. Select the slack notification trigger you just created.
3. Click and hold the drag-and-drop handle.
4. Drag the trigger above the email notification trigger you configured earlier.
5. Click Save.

This order will mean that the support slack channel will receive a daily notification for their on-hold tickets. However, other on-hold tickets will remind the assignee via email instead.


Now you have an overview of the options available to you and can choose the one that fits your team.

Next time, we will explore how to snooze an on-hold ticket until a certain (variable) date.