Support ticket statuses explained: open, pending, resolved (and bot)
By The Relay team · Published · 3 min read
The short answer
Open means the ball is in your court. Pending means you replied and are waiting on the customer. Resolved means it's done, and a new customer message reopens it. A fourth state, bot, covers conversations only the AI has handled. Four statuses are enough for a small team: more of them mostly add maintenance, not clarity.
The statuses, in one table
| Status | Meaning | Who acts next |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Waiting on you: a new customer message, or a handoff from the bot | You |
| Pending | You replied and are waiting for the customer | The customer |
| Resolved | Done. Closed by you, or by the customer tapping "That helped" on a bot answer | No one, until the customer writes again |
| Bot | Only the bot has spoken. Not in the human queue | No one |
How a conversation moves
- A customer asks a question in the chat widget. The conversation starts as bot: the AI or the keyword bot answers.
- If the customer taps "That helped", it becomes resolved, marked as resolved by the bot.
- If they tap "Talk to a human", or the bot can't answer, it becomes open and appears at the top of your inbox.
- You reply: it becomes pending.
- The customer replies: it goes back to open.
- You resolve it: resolved. If the customer writes again, it reopens.
Why pending matters
Without a pending state, every conversation you've answered still looks like work. Your open count is inflated by threads where you're waiting for a reply, you can't tell what needs you today, and replies from customers get lost in the pile. Splitting "I owe them" from "they owe me" is the single most useful thing a status does. It's also why the open count is the number to clear.
When to resolve
- Resolve when the customer's problem is solved, not when you've sent your reply. If you're unsure, leave it pending.
- Send and resolve in one step when the answer is final ("That's fixed in today's release"). In Relay, the composer has a send-and-resolve action.
- Don't resolve to hit a number. Reopened conversations are a signal that you closed too early.
Do you need more statuses?
Larger helpdesks add states such as "on hold", "waiting on engineering" or "snoozed". For a small team, those usually do the job of two simpler things: a tag (for example bug or waiting-on-dev) and a priority. Tags and priorities can be filtered and counted without changing what a status means. Relay has four statuses, tags, and four priorities (low, normal, high, urgent), and internal notes for context the customer never sees.
Run the inbox from the keyboard
In Relay's inbox, j and k move between conversations, r focuses the reply box, / inserts a saved reply, Ctrl+Enter (or ⌘+Enter) sends, and e resolves. With four statuses and those keys, clearing the open view is a loop: read, reply, resolve, next.
Questions
Common questions
- What is the difference between open and pending in a support ticket?
- Open means the next move is yours. Pending means you have replied and are waiting for the customer. A pending conversation becomes open again when the customer replies.
- What statuses does a support ticket need?
- Most small teams need open, pending and resolved. If you also use a bot, a fourth state for bot-only conversations keeps them out of the human queue. Use tags and priority for anything finer.
- Does a resolved ticket reopen?
- In Relay, yes. If the customer writes again, the conversation reopens and returns to your open view.
- What does "resolved by bot" mean?
- The customer tapped "That helped" on a bot answer, so the conversation closed without a person. Relay's inbox has a Bot-handled view for these.
Sources and how we wrote this
Relay is made by the team that wrote this post. Figures for other tools come from their own public pages, listed under Sources, and are list prices in US dollars that can change. If something here is out of date, tell us on the feedback board and we'll correct it.