🛠️ Support ticket theme counter

💡 Use Case

• Counts recurring complaints in a month of exported support tickets: I give it a fixed list of themes and it returns a count per theme and the ticket numbers behind each count.
• The themes come from Amara Diallo and from the column headings of her Shipping exceptions spreadsheet. The model does not get to invent categories.
• Every count is checked by hand against a sample of twenty tickets before the number goes anywhere near a slide.
• Monthly since April. It is how I know the duplicate complaints stopped in the weeks after the new rules, and did not merely move.

⚖️ Pros & Cons

Pros

• Six hundred tickets in the time it takes to make tea.
• The ticket numbers make it checkable. A count I cannot trace is a rumour.
• It reads the angry ones as carefully as the polite ones, which I do not.

Cons

• In the first sample of twenty, three were filed under the wrong theme. Fifteen percent, so the counts are quoted as about.
• A ticket with two complaints is counted once, under whichever came first.
• It tempts me to stop reading tickets. The sample of twenty is as much for me as for the count.

🔄 Alternatives

• Amara's spreadsheet alone: fewer rows, far better reasons.
• Asking Amara which complaint she is tired of hearing. She is right more often than the count.