Ticketing system for customer support teams

Frequently asked questions

What is a ticketing system?

A ticketing system turns every customer request (an email, a chat, a call, a social media message or a form) into a ticket: one record with a status, an assigned agent and the full conversation. Your team works from one shared queue, nothing gets lost in personal inboxes, and you can see how long customers wait and which requests repeat. In customer service, a ticketing system is often called a help desk, a customer service ticketing system or a support ticket system.

What is the best ticketing system for a small business?

One that puts every channel your customers use into one queue, is priced per agent without fees for each AI answer, and that your team can try on real tickets first. In LiveAgent, Starter includes email, live chat and contact forms, Team adds phone and social media, and every plan can be tried free for 30 days without a credit card. For ten tools side by side, see our ticketing tools comparison.

What is the difference between a ticketing system and help desk software?

The ticketing system is the core of help desk software: the queue, statuses, routing and history of every request. Help desk software adds the channels around it, such as live chat, a call center, social media and a knowledge base. In LiveAgent both are one product: tickets from every channel land in the same queue, so the help desk and the ticketing system are the same tool.

Can I keep my support@ address?

Yes. Connect the mailbox by signing in with Google (Gmail, Google Workspace) or Microsoft (Outlook, Microsoft 365), connect it over IMAP, or forward it to LiveAgent. Customers keep writing to the same address, and your replies go out from it. LiveAgent works as an email ticketing system: every new email opens a ticket; a customer's reply goes back into the same ticket, and a chat or call ticket can continue by email in the same thread.

How are tickets assigned to agents?

Rules and AI agents transfer each ticket to the right department or agent, for example by the address it came to, its words or its tags. Agents then press the To solve button to take the next ticket: the oldest first, with tickets closest to their SLA deadline moved up. A ticket goes back to the queue if the agent does not answer within the time you set. Chats and calls are offered to agents directly, by random assignment, the least busy agent or ring to all.

Can I use LiveAgent as an IT ticketing system?

Yes, for internal requests. Give IT its own department and address (for example it@yourcompany.com) or let employees use the customer portal, and IT requests stay in their own queue with their own rules, SLA levels and reports. LiveAgent is built for support, not for IT service management: it has no asset inventory, change management or configuration database, so teams that need ITIL processes use an IT service management tool.

What do the AI agents do on tickets?

AI agents read a ticket and act on it with the tools you allow: they add tags and field values, mark spam, transfer the ticket to a department or agent, write a note, draft or send a reply, resolve it, and write knowledge base articles. A rule starts them, or a dispatch rule lets one agent work through a department's queue. They run on your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini or FlowHunt account, so you pay that provider for what you use and LiveAgent charges no AI fees.

Which plan includes SLA rules and reports?

Starter (up to 5 agents) covers email tickets, contact forms, live chat, a knowledge base, event rules and AI. SLA rules, time rules, reports, phone and social media start with Team (up to 15 agents); the audit log and department roles come with Business (any team size). See the pricing page for each plan's price.

How do I move my tickets from Zendesk or Freshdesk?

Free, with a paid plan. Start a trial and ask support for the migration: LiveAgent's team imports your tickets with their history, contacts, companies, agents, groups (as departments), tags, custom fields and knowledge base articles. Your team keeps answering in the old tool while the data is imported; accounts with fewer than 10,000 tickets usually move in one or two days. Then you point your support email and chat to LiveAgent. Triggers, automations and macros are not imported: you set them up again as LiveAgent rules and canned messages. See moving from Zendesk and free data migration.

Does LiveAgent offer a free trial?

Yes. Every plan can be tried free for 30 days, with no credit card and no setup fee.

Where does LiveAgent store ticket data?

In the region you choose when you sign up: the EU (Frankfurt, Germany), the US (Northern Virginia) or Singapore. LiveAgent signs a data processing agreement on request.