How do you divvy up work within your helpdesk

[Djinni]

It occurred to me that there may be other people/organisations facing the problem I am currently having with appropriately divvying up work within the helpdesk support team.

So my question is:
When an email or a ticket comes in, how do you determine how it is handled, what priorities it is given (if any), who makes sure it gets completed.

At the moment I am using a "triage" style system with priority given to higher paying customers. (Triage is a way of clearing out fast tickets quickly and making time for longer tickets.)

[Denpepe]

first come first served is how it works where I used to work the exeptions ofc to something urgent

[smokii]

it all depends on the root cause of the problem

if someone has a dead pc that wont switch on, thats higher priority than someone who wants X software installed.

someone who can't read their email is also a higher priority than someone who wants X installed, but a lower priority than someone with a dead pc.

you have to prioritise dependant on the impact the issue has on their ability to do their job. as someone who has been a fulltime tech support for 10 years now, thats what it comes down to. although i dont have paying customers.

but if i had a paying customer who wanted X installed, and a non-paying, or lower paying customer who had a dead pc, the dead pc would still be the priority.

the buzzword here is impact. the problem with the biggest impact gets the highest priority.

might wanna get your team some ITIL training.

[Djinni]

Problem I'm finding right now, is that we spend far too much time determining priority. There is basically 1 person who does nothing all day other than to answer phones and determine priority.

This leads to a buildup of tickets in the helpdesk that end up never being done because there is always something more urgent.