@sire, Are you calling me insane?
If so, you completely misunderstood what I wrote.
I didn't say do away with the ticketing system. I said make it easy to communicate with the Help Desk Department.
We have ticketing system and we use it to it's full extent. If someone emails or texts a technician directly, the tech knows to immediately forward it to the help desk email box which automatically generates a help desk ticket or paste it in a new ticket. That's what I mean by making it easier for the user.
"what if the support tech is away for a week and they're getting requests for support?" My staff uses email's out of office assistant plus they set up an out of office voicemail. Users are smart and resourceful. They will move on to another way to get our attention if they want to get their problem addressed.
"Or what if the technician was working on something just prior to taking their leave?" My technicians fill out the ticket explaining what they did and where they left off.
"The other problem of course is when you try to justify a new tech. It's far easier to show the work being done by reference of tickets than comb through everyone's email, wracking everyone's brains for drive-by support, etc. Tickets show exactly what is being done by the helpdesk, how rapidly support is rendered, who is a common requester, etc." Again, non-issue. We use a ticketing system.
Pro 
