Support Triage Automation
A simple starter flow that shows how Semawork can automate support ticket routing. Perfect for teams looking to get started with AI workflow automation.
What This Flow Does
The Problem
Support teams receive a constant stream of customer inquiries through email, helpdesk systems, and other channels. These inquiries arrive in a single inbox or queue, requiring manual triage to determine what each customer needs, which team should handle the request, and how urgent it is. This manual triage process is slow, inconsistent, and creates delays that frustrate customers. Support agents spend significant time reading emails, determining ticket types, and routing to appropriate teams—time that could be spent actually helping customers.
The challenge is compounded by the variety of request types: technical issues need to go to engineering, billing questions to finance, feature requests to product, account changes to customer success. Without intelligent routing, tickets often get misrouted, requiring multiple handoffs before reaching the right team. There's no visibility into ticket volume or types, making it difficult to identify trends, allocate resources, or improve processes. Manual triage also means that urgent issues might not be identified quickly, leading to poor customer experiences.
- •Support emails arrive in a single inbox, requiring manual sorting and triage
- •Manual triage takes time and creates delays in customer response
- •Tickets get routed to wrong teams, requiring multiple handoffs
- •No visibility into ticket volume or types makes resource planning difficult
- •Urgent issues may not be identified quickly without intelligent classification
The Solution
Semawork's Support Triage Automation uses AI to automatically classify incoming support emails, determine urgency, identify the type of request, and route tickets to the correct team—all without manual intervention. When a support email arrives, our agents analyze the content using natural language processing to understand what the customer needs, classify the request type (technical issue, billing question, feature request, etc.), determine urgency based on keywords and sentiment, and identify which team should handle the request based on organizational routing rules.
Once classified, the system automatically creates tickets in your ticketing system (Zendesk, ServiceNow, etc.) with all relevant information, routes to the appropriate team, and notifies team members in Slack with ticket context and customer information. The system maintains visibility into ticket volume and types, providing analytics that help identify trends and improve processes. Over time, the classification accuracy improves as the system learns from routing decisions and resolution outcomes, reducing misrouting and improving customer satisfaction.
- ✓Automatically classify incoming support emails using AI-powered content analysis
- ✓Route to correct team based on request type, urgency, and organizational rules
- ✓Create tickets in your ticketing system automatically with complete context
- ✓Notify team in Slack with ticket context and customer information
- ✓Provide visibility into ticket volume and types for resource planning
Common Use Cases
Technical Support Issues
Customers report technical issues—bugs, errors, performance problems, integration issues. The triage system automatically classifies these as technical issues, determines severity based on error messages and customer impact, and routes to the engineering or technical support team with appropriate priority.
When a customer reports "API returning 500 errors," the system classifies this as a high-priority technical issue, routes to the engineering team, creates a ticket with error details, and notifies the on-call engineer in Slack. This ensures critical technical issues get immediate attention.
Billing & Account Questions
Customers have questions about billing, invoices, account changes, or subscription management. The system classifies these as billing/account requests and routes to the finance or customer success team, ensuring questions are answered by teams with the right access and knowledge.
A customer asks "Can I change my billing cycle?" The system identifies this as an account question, routes to customer success, creates a ticket with account context, and notifies the account manager. This ensures account questions are handled by the right team quickly.
Feature Requests
Customers request new features, product enhancements, or functionality improvements. The system classifies these as feature requests and routes to the product team, ensuring valuable customer feedback reaches product managers who can prioritize and act on it.
A customer suggests "It would be great if we could export reports to Excel." The system classifies this as a feature request, routes to product management, creates a ticket with customer context and usage data, and adds it to the product backlog for consideration.
Urgent Escalations
Some customer issues require immediate attention—service outages, security concerns, critical bugs affecting multiple customers. The system identifies urgent issues through keywords, sentiment analysis, and customer tier, routing them with high priority and notifying multiple team members.
An enterprise customer reports "Our entire system is down." The system identifies this as an urgent escalation, routes to the engineering team with highest priority, creates a critical ticket, and notifies both the support manager and on-call engineer immediately through multiple channels.
How It Works
Email Arrives
Support email arrives in your inbox (Gmail, Outlook, or helpdesk)
AI Classification
Semawork analyzes email content to determine ticket type, urgency, and required team
Intelligent Routing
Ticket is routed to the appropriate team based on classification (IT, Sales, Support, etc.)
Ticket Creation
Ticket is automatically created in your ticketing system with all relevant context
Team Notification
Team is notified in Slack with ticket details and priority
Intelligent Triage Automation
AI-Powered Classification Engine
The triage system uses advanced natural language processing and machine learning to analyze ticket content and classify tickets automatically. It examines subject lines, descriptions, customer history, and context to determine ticket type, urgency, severity, and required expertise. The classification engine learns from how your team resolves tickets, improving accuracy over time without manual retraining.
Classification considers multiple factors including keywords, sentiment, customer tier, historical patterns, and ticket characteristics. The system can classify tickets into categories like technical issues, billing questions, feature requests, account changes, or escalations, ensuring each ticket reaches the appropriate team.
The classification engine processes both structured data (ticket fields, customer data) and unstructured data (free-form descriptions, email content), using transformer-based models to extract relevant information and make classification decisions. This enables accurate classification even when ticket information is incomplete or uses varied terminology.
Automatic Priority Assignment
The system automatically assigns priority levels based on ticket characteristics including urgency indicators, customer tier, issue severity, and business impact. High-priority tickets are routed immediately with appropriate escalation, while routine tickets follow standard workflows. This automatic prioritization ensures critical issues receive immediate attention while routine tickets are processed efficiently.
Priority assignment considers factors like service level agreements, customer contracts, issue severity, and historical resolution patterns. The system can adjust priorities based on business rules and learn from priority assignment outcomes to improve accuracy.
Duplicate Detection and Correlation
The triage system automatically detects duplicate tickets and correlates related tickets, preventing redundant work and ensuring consistent responses. When multiple customers report the same issue, the system recognizes the pattern, links related tickets, and can route them to the same team member or create a parent ticket. This correlation reduces duplicate work and ensures consistent handling of related issues.
Duplicate detection uses content similarity, timing patterns, and customer relationships to identify related tickets. The system maintains relationships between tickets, helping teams understand issue scope and coordinate responses.
Intelligent Routing Logic
Multi-Factor Routing Decisions
Routing decisions consider multiple factors including ticket classification, required expertise, team workload, on-call schedules, customer relationships, and historical resolution patterns. The system analyzes these factors to determine the best team or individual to handle each ticket, ensuring tickets reach people with the right skills and availability.
Routing factors include ticket type (technical, billing, feature request), required expertise (engineering, finance, product), team capacity (current workload, availability), customer relationships (account manager, customer success manager), and historical patterns (who has resolved similar tickets successfully).
The routing system uses machine learning to optimize routing decisions based on outcomes. It learns which routing decisions lead to faster resolution, higher satisfaction, and better outcomes, continuously improving routing accuracy.
Dynamic Routing Based on Context
Routing adapts to context including time of day, team availability, ticket volume, and urgency. During business hours, tickets might route to primary teams, while after-hours tickets route to on-call engineers. High-volume periods might distribute tickets across multiple team members, while low-volume periods might route to specialists. This dynamic routing ensures optimal resource utilization and response times.
Context-aware routing considers real-time conditions to make optimal routing decisions. The system monitors team availability, ticket queues, and workload to route tickets efficiently while maintaining quality.
Escalation and Reassignment Logic
The system includes intelligent escalation logic that automatically escalates tickets when they're not resolved within configured timeframes, when customer tier requires escalation, or when tickets require specialized expertise. Escalation can route to senior team members, managers, or specialized teams based on ticket characteristics and organizational structure.
Escalation logic ensures tickets don't get stuck and critical issues receive appropriate attention. The system tracks escalation patterns to identify areas where processes might need improvement or where additional training might be needed.
Response Time Improvements
Immediate Ticket Routing
Automated triage eliminates the delay between ticket arrival and routing, routing tickets immediately upon arrival instead of waiting for manual triage. This immediate routing reduces first response time significantly, as tickets reach the right team members within seconds rather than hours. Teams can begin working on tickets immediately, improving customer satisfaction and resolution times.
Immediate routing is particularly valuable for urgent tickets and high-priority customers, ensuring critical issues receive attention without delay. The system can route urgent tickets with immediate notifications, bypassing normal queues for time-sensitive issues.
By eliminating manual triage delays, organizations can reduce first response time by 50-75%, significantly improving customer satisfaction and meeting service level agreements more consistently.
Accurate Routing Reduces Re-routing
Accurate initial routing reduces the need for ticket re-routing, which adds delay and frustrates customers. When tickets are routed correctly the first time, teams can begin resolution immediately without the delay and confusion of re-routing. The triage system's high accuracy rate (90%+) ensures most tickets reach the right team immediately.
Reduced re-routing saves time for both support teams and customers, improving efficiency and satisfaction. The system learns from routing corrections to improve accuracy over time.
Proactive Escalation Prevents Delays
Automatic escalation ensures tickets don't get stuck waiting for response. When tickets aren't resolved within configured timeframes, the system automatically escalates to backup approvers or managers, preventing delays. This proactive escalation maintains workflow momentum and ensures tickets receive attention even when primary handlers are unavailable.
Proactive escalation prevents tickets from languishing in queues and ensures timely resolution. The system tracks escalation patterns to identify areas where processes might need adjustment.
Workload Balancing
The routing system balances workload across team members, distributing tickets to prevent overload and ensure even distribution. This workload balancing prevents bottlenecks where some team members are overwhelmed while others are idle, optimizing overall response times and team efficiency.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the support triage system classify incoming tickets?
The system uses AI-powered natural language processing to analyze ticket content—subject lines, descriptions, and customer history—to classify tickets by type, urgency, and required expertise. The classification considers factors like keywords, sentiment, customer tier, and historical patterns. The system learns from how your team resolves tickets to improve classification accuracy over time.
Can the system route tickets to the right team member automatically?
Yes, based on ticket classification and your team structure, the system automatically routes tickets to the most appropriate team member. Routing considers factors like team expertise, current workload, on-call schedules, and historical resolution patterns. This ensures tickets reach the right person quickly, reducing resolution time and improving customer satisfaction.
What happens if a ticket needs to be escalated or reassigned?
The system supports automatic escalation based on ticket age, customer tier, or other criteria. If a ticket isn't resolved within configured timeframes, it can be automatically escalated to senior team members or managers. The system also allows manual reassignment and tracks escalation patterns to identify areas where processes might need improvement.
How does the system handle duplicate or related tickets?
The system uses intelligent correlation to identify duplicate or related tickets, linking them together and preventing duplicate work. When multiple customers report the same issue, the system recognizes the pattern and can consolidate tickets or route them to the same team member. This reduces redundant work and ensures consistent responses to related issues.
Can the system provide suggested responses or solutions for common issues?
Yes, the system can suggest responses or solutions based on ticket classification and historical resolution data. For common issues with known solutions, it can provide response templates or automated responses, allowing agents to resolve tickets faster. The system learns from successful resolutions to improve suggestion quality over time.
How does the system integrate with email and support ticketing systems?
The system integrates with email systems to monitor support inboxes and with ticketing systems like Zendesk, Intercom, or ServiceNow to create and manage tickets. When emails arrive, the system extracts ticket information, classifies the request, creates tickets in your ticketing system, and routes them appropriately. This provides seamless integration with your existing support infrastructure.
Ready to automate your support triage?
This is just one example of a simple starter flow. Let's discuss how Semawork can automate your support operations.