Organizing tickets with labels

Labels are one of the most flexible tools in SupportBee for keeping your inbox organized. While Managing Labels covers how to create and apply them, this article focuses on how to use labels effectively as part of your team's workflow.

Choosing a labeling strategy

Before creating labels, decide what you want to track. Most teams find one or two of these approaches useful:

By request type - Labels like "Bug Report", "Feature Request", "Billing", "How-to Question" help you understand what your customers need most. This is the most common approach and works well for reporting.

By urgency or priority - Labels like "Urgent", "Waiting on Customer", "Escalated" help your team triage and prioritize. Use these sparingly - if everything is urgent, nothing is.

By product or feature area - Labels like "Mobile App", "Billing Portal", "API" are useful when different team members own different areas.

By workflow stage - Labels like "Needs Follow-up", "Waiting on Engineering", "Ready to Close" help track tickets that need action but are not yet resolved.

You can combine approaches since tickets support multiple labels. A ticket might be labeled both "Bug Report" and "Mobile App" to indicate what it is and which area it affects.

Best practices for label management

  • Keep the list short - Aim for 10-20 labels at most. A long list of labels makes it harder for agents to pick the right one and reduces consistency.
  • Use clear, specific names - "Billing Issue" is better than "Money" or "Payment". Agents should not have to guess which label to use.
  • Avoid overlapping labels - If you have both "Bug" and "Issue", agents will use them inconsistently. Pick one.
  • Review labels quarterly - Remove labels that are rarely used or merge labels that mean the same thing. Check for labels with only a few tickets versus ones with thousands.
  • Document your labels - A brief internal guide explaining when to use each label saves time on training and keeps your team consistent.

Using labels with filters for automation

Combine labels with filters to reduce manual work:

  • Auto-label by keyword - Create a filter that adds the "Billing" label to any ticket containing "invoice", "charge", or "subscription" in the subject
  • Auto-label by sender domain - Label all tickets from a specific customer domain with their company name
  • Auto-label by receiving address - If [email protected] receives a ticket, automatically label it "Billing"

Filters apply labels as tickets arrive, so your team sees categorized tickets from the start without manual triage.

Filtering your ticket view by label

Click any label in the left navigation bar to see only tickets with that label. This filtered view includes unanswered, answered, and archived tickets with that label.

This is useful for:

  • Reviewing all open bugs before a planning meeting
  • Checking how many "Waiting on Customer" tickets need follow-up
  • Finding all tickets related to a specific feature area

Using labels for reporting

Labels feed directly into your understanding of support volume by category. By labeling tickets consistently, you can answer questions like:

  • What percentage of tickets are bug reports versus feature requests?
  • Which product area generates the most support questions?
  • Are billing questions increasing month over month?

Review your label distribution periodically in the ticket listings to spot trends. If one label consistently has more tickets than others, it may indicate an area that needs documentation, product improvement, or dedicated staffing.