Trouble Ticket Management in Telecom Domain

Trouble Ticket Management in Telecom Domain

What is a Telecom Trouble Ticket?
Trouble tickets are formal records that identify a problem, and then assign responsibility for analysis and resolution of that problem. A ticket could be as simple as a note of paper with description of the issue, its status, the date of the complaint, name of the complainant, and the resolution date, etc.

· A trouble ticket problem can be related with:
· A phone set
· A phone service
· A voicemail
· Long distance authorization codes
· Service down time

The customer raises a trouble ticket, if there is an issue in the telecom service. The problems encountered by customers can vary from customer to customer, place to place, but on a broader level Trouble Tickets can be categorized into Telecom exchange end or Customer equipment end, which can be further subdivided to categories on the basis of skill set requirements. Whenever a customer experiences any problem with the issues listed above; a trouble ticket is raised to a service provider. A program called Request Tracker (RT) keeps track and points out the details of the complaints. This allows the tester to inform more accurately about how long will it take for a request to be processed and performed. The tester sends the customer an email to notify; when the work will be completed.

An ideal trouble ticket resolution application should be able to:

· Ensure that network and other offered services are well managed and any escalated issue is resolved promptly
· Determines, which problem should be considered as urgent
· Creation of complete task report from resolution, closure to archiving
· The application should have an archived database that can be used by the tester to analyze and resolve any impending issue related with trouble ticket
· The application should be cost effective and resolve any issue promptly
· The application should be user friendly and easy to learn
· The application should be flexible enough to be customized as per client requirement
· The application should be able to split and merge existing trouble tickets
· The application should have an efficient resource management system
· The application should have automatic ticket escalation as well as shift escalation system.
· Report Trouble Ticket efficiently. In an ideal Trouble Ticket application, the Customer reports the fault by using the Trouble Ticket Reporting front end of the application or by calling the helpdesk. The customer has to answer the predefined intelligent set of questions, which also initiates the Fault diagnosis process. If the fault is similar to the one already reported then it is marked as a repeat Trouble Ticket. Customer is provided with the Trouble Ticket ID so that customer can check the status of the Trouble Ticket.
· Diagnosis the trouble issues efficiently. A Trouble Ticket application should have a workflow automation engine to test necessary tasks such as line test, network test to detect the cause and category of the problem reported.
· Provide regular updates to client. The Client should receive the regular updates pertaining to current status of the trouble ticket.
· Fix an appointment in case In case the resolution requires Customer site visit,
· Maintain the trouble Ticket Closure reports.

An on-line Trouble Ticket form should have these fields given below:

· First Name
· Last Name
· Company
· E-mail
· Phone
· Hosting OS Platform
· Account ID
· Username
· Account Password
· Problem Subject