Statuses, and what each one really means

Status is the single most-abused field in every helpdesk. Agree the meanings and your reports become true.

The honest definitions

New — nobody has looked at it.

Open — it is with us and we owe the customer the next message.

Pending — we are waiting on the customer. Not on a colleague, not on a supplier.

On hold — we are waiting on a third party we do not control.

Resolved — we believe it is finished and the customer has not disagreed yet.

Closed — finished and settled.

Why the pending distinction matters

SLA clocks pause on pending and on hold. If agents mark tickets pending while the ball is still in their court, response-time reports look excellent and customers are furious. This one habit destroys more helpdesk deployments than any technical fault.

Enforcing it

Automation can flag any ticket that has been pending for more than seven days with no customer reply, and any ticket set to pending within sixty seconds of a staff reply that asked no question.