Ticket triage is the sorting of incoming customer messages by topic, urgency and who should handle them, so the most important ones are answered first.
Triage answers three questions for each message: what is it about, how urgent is it, and who should deal with it. A damaged item before a birthday is urgent, a size question is not, and a chargeback threat should go straight to the owner.
Done by hand, triage is the first job of the morning and it gets skipped when the inbox is full. Clear categories help. Hobson starts with Order status, Delivery problem, Returns & refunds, Damaged or wrong item, Product question, Billing & payments, Account and Feedback.
Hobson sorts every conversation into a category and drafts the reply, and views and routing help each one reach the right person. Categories also carry the autonomy setting, see autonomy and workflow.