Question about the Report Player feature

Hello, everyone! Here lately, I've been wondering about the functionality of the "Report Player" feature in-game. As an example: Let's say a player named Toughguybob types something inappropriate in trade chat. Right-click on the person's name and you get a small menu with a few options, one being "Report Player." As far as I know, this feature sends some sort of report to Blizzard (flags the person you are reporting, I guess?) and also puts the person on ignore for the character you are currently on (and maybe just temporarily until you log off? I forget the details I read about it when it was implemented a while back).

As of late, I've been on an alt spree and I often see level one characters spawn in, say, Northshire with some scrambled name. They start glitching around and after doing a quick /who, they are in Stormwind where I would suspect they are doing that lovely gold spam that we all adore so very much. I've also caught players out in Eastern Plaguelands who are botting in Stratholme. I don't mind opening up tickets on these individuals, and multiple GMs have told me before that they encourage me to do so. Anyway, earlier today I opened a ticket on a level one player I spotted in a starting zone doing the glitching thing. I opened a quick ticket with the information, stating the usual (suspicious activity, potential account theft, etc.). About 20 minutes later, I received mail in my inbox from a GM informing me that I should use the in-game "Report Player" feature to report such things.

My question is: what sort of information does that give to Blizzard? How are you able to tell the difference in me reporting some wacko who's running his/her mouth in a public channel vs. someone that's botting/hacking/stuff-like-that? I would assume that they are able to view data about the character's last actions... or something...

Anywho, sorry for the long set-up. I'm just wondering how effective the "Report Player" function is and what situations it is most appropriate for. If that saves me and a buncha GMs some time, I'll be happy to use that instead of opening tickets (I know you guys get bogged down anyways). But I'd like to know that the proper information is being obtained.