Tickets and chats should be resolved once you feel you have completely and satisfactorily resolved the customer's inquiry. Additionally, you should ask yourself if you've accomplished the mission of providing world-class customer service before hitting resolve.
When you mark a ticket or chat as resolved, the customer will immediately receive a survey, so ensuring that the customer's inquiries are answered prior to marking the ticket as resolved will result in positive customer reviews.
When should I wait to resolve a ticket?
If the customer asked about their order status and you needed to request their order number, resolving the ticket before you receive the order number would likely result in an unfavorable customer review because you haven't provided their order status yet.
If you had to request any information from the customer, it's best to wait to resolve the inquiry to maximize your Customer Reviews.
Here is a great example of this in action:
Why is resolving important?
It is also important to mark tickets as resolved as soon as they are fully resolved (meaning, you've answered all of the customer's initial questions and you're not awaiting follow-up information from them.)
This will help keep your inbox cleared out which can make you a more effective Expert.
This also helps ensure customers complete the survey; customers are more likely to provide you a favorable rating if they receive the survey as soon as after you've helped them as possible.
Why can't I resolve a ticket?
In certain situations (but not always) the platform will prevent you from marking the ticket as resolved to ensure that you have assisted the customer. Be careful to ensure you hit the resolve button after hitting the send button. Otherwise, your response will not be sent.
What if I don't hear back or don't mark the ticket as resolved?
If you're still awaiting information from the customer after 48 hours, the ticket will automatically resolve and you'll be paid for the ticket.
If the customer reaches back out again after this point, it'll be treated like a new ticket. We'll do our best to send the new ticket back to you so that you can continue helping the customer, but if you're not online, it'll go to another Expert to keep the customer from waiting.
Will my earnings be impacted?
No, marking a ticket as resolved has NO bearing on your earnings. Resolving a ticket only sends the survey and removes it from your inbox.
The status we use for your payment is that you must have had the last reply for 48 hours.
What if the customer replies to a ticket that is marked as resolved?
If the ticket did not hit the 48-hour mark when the customer replies to the ticket, it will show back up in your inbox, and you'll have 24 hours to send another reply to hopefully hit the 48-hour mark with no response from the customer.
If the ticket had already hit 48-hours, you'll be paid for that 48-hour period, and we'll do our best to send it back to you so that you can answer the customer and receive a secondary payout.
If you are not online, it will be routed to another Expert for the additional response/payout. This all happens regardless of if you mark the ticket as resolved or not.
Will unresolved tickets impact my ticket volume?
As long as you've responded to the customer, leaving it unresolved while you wait for a response from the customer will NOT impact your incoming ticket volume.
The only time a ticket will impact your incoming ticket volume is if it is awaiting a response from you back to the customer.
In summary...
It is always in the best interest of your earnings and performance to wait to resolve a ticket until you've fully resolved the customer's inquiries. That said, once you've done so, it's best to go ahead and mark it resolved to maximize the chances you receive a positive rating.