# Plan how to clear a support ticket backlog

A day-by-day recovery plan to bring an overgrown ticket queue back under control without hurting quality.

- Topic: Customer Support
- Framework: RTF
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Customer Support, Plan, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/plan-how-to-clear-a-support-ticket-backlog

## Prompt

```text
Help me plan how to clear a ticket backlog.

**Current backlog:** [NUMBER of open tickets, and how many are overdue against our targets]
**Age breakdown:** [e.g. "400 under 2 days, 300 at 2-7 days, 150 over 7 days"]
**Breakdown by type or priority:** [CATEGORIES AND COUNTS]
**Daily incoming volume:** [AVERAGE]
**Team capacity:** [agents, hours, tickets per agent per day]
**Cause of the backlog:** [spike, outage, staff shortage, new release, unknown]
**Extra help available:** [overtime, other teams, temporary staff, budget]

Build a plan with:
1. Triage first: how to find and handle urgent and high-value tickets, duplicates from the same incident, and tickets that are already resolved or stale.
2. The math: how many days to reach a normal backlog at current capacity, and with each option for extra help. Show it.
3. Tactics ranked by impact: bulk replies for the same issue, macros, a proactive notice to stop repeat contacts, swarming on one category, temporarily pausing low-value work.
4. A schedule: who works which queue, by day.
5. A message for customers waiting a long time, acknowledging the delay honestly.
6. Quality guardrails so speed doesn't cause wrong answers or reopened tickets.
7. What to fix so it doesn't happen again.

Use my numbers only; mark assumptions clearly.
```

## What to fill in

- e.g. "400 under 2 days, 300 at 2-7 days, 150 over 7 days"
- CATEGORIES AND COUNTS
- AVERAGE
- agents, hours, tickets per agent per day
- spike, outage, staff shortage, new release, unknown
- overtime, other teams, temporary staff, budget

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.