Support Ticket Triage Template for PMs

Four levels (P0 through P3) work for most teams. Three feels too coarse because you end up debating whether a broken feature is "critical" or "medium." Five or more creates decision fatigue and slows down triage. If your team consistently argues about classifications, the definitions are too vague, not that you need more tiers.

A support team lead or senior agent typically owns triage during business hours. For off-hours coverage, the engineering on-call should handle P0 tickets directly while other severities queue for the next business day. The product manager should review triage rules quarterly but should not be in the real-time triage loop.

Create a "General" or "Other" category as a catch-all, but review it weekly. If more than 15% of tickets land in the catch-all, you are missing a category. Add it to the routing table and update your helpdesk tags. Patterns in the catch-all bucket often reveal gaps in your product documentation or onboarding.

Automate classification for clear-cut cases (password resets, billing inquiries based on subject line keywords) but keep human triage for anything ambiguous. Most helpdesk tools support rule-based auto-tagging. Use the [self-service strategy template](/templates/self-service-strategy-template) to identify which ticket types are worth automating end-to-end.

Review quarterly at minimum. Update immediately when you launch a new product area, change your support team structure, or notice a spike in misrouted tickets. Track misroutes as a metric. If more than 10% of tickets get reassigned after initial triage, your routing rules need refinement. ---