Ticket Triage

What This Skill Does

This skill categorizes, prioritizes, and routes incoming support tickets or customer issues. It generates a structured triage assessment, including a suggested initial response, to streamline support workflows.

When to Use

Triage a new support ticket from a customer. Categorize a customer's complaint about a product. Prioritize an urgent issue affecting multiple users. Route a billing inquiry to the finance team. Assess the severity of a reported security vulnerability. Identify duplicate tickets related to the same issue.

Key Features

• Parses the issue to extract key information.
• Categorizes issues using a defined taxonomy.
• Prioritizes issues based on impact and urgency.
• Checks for duplicates and known issues.
• Recommends the appropriate team or queue for routing.
• Suggests an initial response to the customer.

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.

Categorize, prioritize, and route an incoming support ticket or customer issue. Produces a structured triage assessment with a suggested initial response.

Usage

/ticket-triage <ticket text, customer message, or issue description>

Examples: /ticket-triage Customer says their dashboard has been showing a blank page since this morning /ticket-triage "I was charged twice for my subscription this month" /ticket-triage User can't connect their SSO — getting a 403 error on the callback URL /ticket-triage Feature request: they want to export reports as PDF

Workflow

1. Parse the Issue

Read the input and extract:

Core problem: What is the customer actually experiencing? Symptoms: What specific behavior or error are they seeing? Customer context: Who is this? Any account details, plan level, or history available? Urgency signals: Are they blocked? Is this production? How many users affected? Emotional state: Frustrated, confused, matter-of-fact, escalating?

2. Categorize and Prioritize

Using the category taxonomy and priority framework below:

Assign a primary category (bug, how-to, feature request, billing, account, integration, security, data, performance) and an optional secondary category Assign a priority (P1–P4) based on impact and urgency Identify the product area the issue maps to

3. Check for Duplicates and Known Issues

Before routing, check available sources:

~~support platform: Search for similar open or recently resolved tickets ~~knowledge base: Check for known issues or existing documentation ~~project tracker: Check if there's an existing bug report or feature request

Apply the duplicate detection process below.

4. Determine Routing

Using the routing rules below, recommend which team or queue should handle this based on category and complexity.

5. Generate Triage Output

Triage: [One-line issue summary]

Category: [Primary] / [Secondary if applicable] Priority: [P1-P4] — [Brief justification] Product area: [Area/team]

Issue Summary

[2-3 sentence summary of what the customer is experiencing]

Key Details

Customer: [Name/account if known] Impact: [Who and what is affected] Workaround: [Available / Not available / Unknown] Related tickets: [Links to similar issues if found] Known issue: [Yes — link / No / Checking]

Routing Recommendation

Route to: [Team or queue] Why: [Brief reasoning]

Suggested Initial Response

[Draft first response to the customer — acknowledge the issue, set expectations, provide workaround if available. Use the auto-response templates below as a starting point.]

Internal Notes

[Any additional context for the agent picking this up] [Reproduction hints if it's a bug] [Escalation triggers to watch for]

6. Offer Next Steps

After presenting the triage: "Want me to draft a full response to the customer?" "Should I search for more context on this issue?" "Want me to check if this is a known bug in the tracker?" "Should I escalate this? I can package it with /customer-escalation."

Category Taxonomy

Assign every ticket a primary category and optionally a secondary category:

Category Determination Tips

If the customer reports both a bug and a feature request, the bug is primary If they can't log in due to a bug, category is Bug (not Account) — root cause drives the category "It used to work and now it doesn't" = Bug "I want it to work differently" = Feature request "How do I make it work?" = How-to When in doubt, lean toward Bug — it's better to investigate than dismiss

Priority Framework

P1 — Critical

Criteria: Production system down, data loss or corruption, security breach, all or most users affected.

The customer cannot use the product at all Data is being lost, corrupted, or exposed A security incident is in progress The issue is worsening or expanding in scope

• SLA expectation: Respond within 1 hour.
• Continuous work until resolved or mitigated.
• Updates every 1-2 hours.

P2 — High

Criteria: Major feature broken, significant workflow blocked, many users affected, no workaround.

A core workflow is broken but the product is partially usable Multiple users are affected or a key account is impacted The issue is blocking time-sensitive work No reasonable workaround exists

• SLA expectation: Respond within 4 hours.
• Active investigation same day.
• Updates every 4 hours.

P3 — Medium

Criteria: Feature partially broken, workaround available, single user or small team affected.

A feature isn't working correctly but a workaround exists The issue is inconvenient but not blocking critical work A single user or small team is affected The customer is not escalating urgently

SLA expectation: Respond within 1 business day. Resolution or update within 3 business days.

P4 — Low

Criteria: Minor inconvenience, cosmetic issue, general question, feature request.

Cosmetic or UI issues that don't affect functionality Feature requests and enhancement ideas General questions or how-to inquiries Issues with simple, documented solutions

SLA expectation: Respond within 2 business days. Resolution at normal pace.

Priority Escalation Triggers

Automatically bump priority up when: Customer has been waiting longer than the SLA allows Multiple customers report the same issue (pattern detected) The customer explicitly escalates or mentions executive involvement A workaround that was in place stops working The issue expands in scope (more users, more data, new symptoms)

Routing Rules

Route tickets based on category and complexity: