# Categorize support tickets in a spreadsheet

A helpdesk export lands in a sheet every week. Three columns triage it: who needs an answer today, what each ticket is about, and how upset the customer is.

Updated 22 September 2026. Source: https://hunchsheet.app/formulas/categorize-support-tickets-spreadsheet

## The three formulas

```
=HUNCH(A2:A500, "Does the customer need a response within hours, not days?")
```
In Excel: `=HUNCH.ASK(A2:A500, "Does the customer need a response within hours, not days?")`

```
=HUNCHPICK(A2:A500, "billing: charges, invoices, refunds|bug: something is broken or crashes|question: how-to or pricing question|feedback: praise or suggestion, no action needed|other")
```
In Excel: `=HUNCH.PICK(A2:A500, "billing: charges, invoices, refunds|bug: something is broken or crashes|question: how-to or pricing question|feedback: praise or suggestion, no action needed|other")`

```
=HUNCHSCORE(A2:A500, "How frustrated is the customer?", "calm|annoyed|angry|furious", "label")
```
In Excel: `=HUNCH.SCORE(A2:A500, "How frustrated is the customer?", "calm|annoyed|angry|furious", "label")`

The category list uses a colon to describe each option. Descriptions sharpen the pick when two options could overlap, like billing and question.

## Real outputs

| Ticket | Urgent? (0–1) | Category | Frustration |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Our whole team is locked out since this morning, we have a client demo at 2pm. Please call me. | 0.97 | bug | angry |
| I was charged twice for the March invoice. Can you refund the duplicate? | 0.35 | billing | calm |
| The export button does nothing on Safari. Works in Chrome. Not urgent. | 0.10 | bug | calm |
| How do I add a second admin to my workspace? | 0.40 | question | calm |
| This is the third time I am writing about the same bug and nobody replies. I am done. | 0.52 | bug | angry |
| Loving the new dashboard, small thing: the date picker ignores my timezone. | 0.39 | bug | annoyed |
| Great support last week, thanks. Everything works now. | 0.12 | feedback | calm |

The locked-out team is 0.97 urgent and angry; the Safari button, which the customer marked "not urgent", is 0.10. Sort by column B and the morning queue writes itself.

## Why "other" is mandatory

A pick formula must choose something. Without an `other` option, a ticket about a partnership request gets forced into billing or bug and quietly pollutes your counts. With it, the odd ones collect in one place you can read on Friday.

> Tip: Export the same columns every week and keep the questions identical. Then a pivot on category by week is a real trend, not a change in wording.

## Questions

### Which helpdesks does this work with?

Any that exports to CSV or Google Sheets: Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Gmail labels via an export add-on. The formula only needs the message text in a column.

### Can it route tickets automatically?

It classifies. Routing is a FILTER or a QUERY on the category column, or an Apps Script trigger you add yourself.

### Is customer text stored?

No. Cell text passes through to compute the answer and is not stored. Details on the privacy page.