Good service is not a reaction mode but a relationship you steer. Even so, those wanting to improve customer care often buy a ticketing system first – the wrong place to start. teamspace is the tool; it models and automates a process it cannot replace. Good customer care is built in layers, from the top down – first the goal, then the sub-goals and metrics, and only at the end the way it is mapped in the system. This process guide first describes that path and then shows the core process in teamspace.
Guiding principle: Value before volume. It’s not the loudest complaint that should be handled first, but the most valuable relationship – and an SLA is a promise you measure, not an ornament in the contract.
Five layers: from goal to lived practice
Before you set anything up in teamspace, clarify the layers above it – and keep one layer below in mind: the people who ultimately live the process. Each one answers a different question and builds on the one before:
- Goal & core question. At its heart, customer care answers: How do we look after customers quickly and by value? “Quickly” (meeting deadlines) and “by value” (the right ones first) are both meant.
- Sub-goals – three mindsets. The core question breaks down into three mindsets you steer separately:
- Value before volume: prioritise by customer value and SLA, not by order of arrival or loudness of complaint.
- SLA as a promise: response and resolution times are measured and steered, not just agreed.
- Relationship instead of reaction mode: service becomes plannable and steerable rather than driven.
- Measurable data. You can only steer what you measure. The metrics of customer care – First Response Time, time to resolution, SLA compliance, ticket volume per customer, effort per customer and open tickets per channel – and whether teamspace delivers them, are set out in Key figures for customer care.
- Modelling in the tool. Now – and only now – teamspace comes in. The decisive lever: requests from email, phone, website and Teams arrive centrally as a ticket – with channel, owner, SLA traffic light and time booking. This creates a single view across tickets, maintenance project, billing and portal, instead of scattered inboxes.
- Rollout & training – the people. A mapped process is still only a promise. “Quickly and by value” only works if the team captures every request as a ticket and books the handling time on the ticket – nothing slips past the statistics. That takes rollout, training and conventions (When is a ticket “solved”? What gets booked onto what?). This closes the loop: SLA compliance and effort per customer from layer 3 are only as reliable as the tickets from layer 5. Helpful: Rolling out teamspace in your company and the Ticketing introduction.
The crux: most people jump straight to layer 4. Then you have a ticketing system – but without a defined goal (layer 1), without metrics (layer 3) and without a team that captures tickets consistently (layer 5), service doesn’t get any better, just more digital.
Stocktake: where do we stand today?
Every improvement starts with an honest stocktake: How do we really look after customers at the moment? A maturity-level scale helps here – six levels from “things slip” to “runs by itself”:
| Level | Maturity | How to recognise it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Unplanned | Requests spread across inboxes and calls, some get left lying. |
| 1 | Manual | Ticketing system in place, but with laborious assignment. |
| 2 | Structured | Tickets with status, channels and ownership; SLA agreed but rarely measured. |
| 3 | Assisted | SLA time remaining as a traffic light, workflows per channel, ticket statistics. |
| 4 | Automated | Time-based escalation, prioritisation by customer value, ticket billing, self-service portal. |
| 5 | End-to-end | A single view across tickets, maintenance project, billing and portal; follow-up emails and reminders run by themselves. |
Honestly place your service at one level. The jump almost always succeeds one level at a time – and the most important is from 2 to 3: only once SLA time remaining is visible as a traffic light does the “agreed” promise become a steered one.
Where do we want to go?
The target picture is not “level 5 for everyone”. It’s the level that fits your service model and ticket volume – and that can deliver the layer-3 metrics you genuinely need.
And an important point about working together: we provide the core process – the stages from request to analysis are set up in teamspace and proven. But the details – which channels and roles you use, which SLA deadlines apply, what counts as a “valuable customer” – we don’t know those, you do. A good approach therefore emerges jointly.
The core process in teamspace
This is what the predefined core process looks like – from the incoming request to analysis. Every stage has its own article; the list of steps at the top of this page is the short version.
1. Capture the request. Requests centrally become a ticket – as an email ticket, from an enquiry or internally, including via external self-service access. The structure is explained in the Ticketing introduction.
2. Prioritise by value. Value before volume: via key account managers, VIPs and service notes you make customer value visible; the ticket lists and views and the SLA status determine the order.
3. Handle. In the ticket you work through the matter: reply to emails, maintain the solution path, switch status and owner – all in the detail manager, with time booking onto the project.
4. Ownership & escalation. SLA as a promise: visibility & access clarifies owner, responsible person and channel team – on a deadline breach the owner is released and the channel team takes over. You set reminders with the ticket reminder.
5. Bill. Service time becomes revenue: billing tickets books the effort onto the standard or maintenance project and converts it into an invoice.
6. Analyse. The close is formed by the ticket reports: ticket volume and effort by handler, customer or project, filtered by status, channel and SLA.
Transition: As soon as service times are billed, the billing process takes over. Maintenance contracts and allowances run via the maintenance fee & allowances.
Going deeper
These articles belong to customer care but aren’t needed for every start:
- Activities and follow-ups – the daily phone and follow-up list in the CRM.
- Using the Outlook add-in – turn emails into tickets straight from Outlook.
- Visibility & access on the ticket – roles, channels and who sees what.
- Prospects, customers and suppliers – the ABC rating as a value yardstick.
You’ll find the complete list of all articles on this process at the bottom of the process page under “All articles for this process”.
Related topics
- Key figures for customer care Key figures Concept
- Ticketing – introduction Ticketing Introduction
- Customer care on teamspace.de – goals, maturity levels and metrics at a glance