Triage is the intake stage of the support workflow where incoming tickets are assessed and routed before work begins. Borrowed from medical terminology, it ensures limited support capacity is directed to the issues with the greatest urgency or business impact rather than processed in simple first-in, first-out order.
During triage, agents or automated systems typically:
- Assign a priority level (e.g., P1–P4 or low/medium/high/critical)
- Categorize the issue type for routing and reporting
- Tag tickets with relevant product area, customer tier, or SLA
- Identify duplicates or related tickets to consolidate effort
Effective triage reduces resolution time and prevents high-severity issues from being buried under lower-priority volume. For example, a triage rule might automatically escalate any ticket from an enterprise customer mentioning "data loss" to a Tier 2 queue and notify an escalation manager. Automation and AI are increasingly used to assist or fully handle triage at scale.