If the client has not defined ticket priority levels in the helpdesk, how would you create your own quick triage system on the fly to sort a large backlog? What labels or criteria would you use?

Situation

In my previous role as a customer service intern for a small e-commerce shop, the owner did not use any priority labels in the shared inbox, so every new message looked the same even when some were urgent.

Task

I needed to quickly create a simple sorting system I could use alone to decide which customer emails to answer first each day.

Action

I opened each unread email and assigned one of three temporary colour tags: red for anything involving money, delivery failure, or a threat to complain publicly; yellow for time-sensitive questions like order cancellations; green for general product questions or feedback. I then sorted the inbox by tag and answered all red tags first, then yellow, then green. I also added a note to each red ticket with the reason for the tag so my supervisor could review.

Result

The system reduced my first-response time for urgent payment issues from over four hours to under 30 minutes, and I never missed a cancellation request during my internship.