Episode 75: Support Request Systems
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Support request systems help you help your customers. This week we talk about things to think and about and recognize before implementing one.
Geek Tool – 01:35
- Blue Microphone’s Icicle – Allows you to use high quality XLR microphones on your USB port.
Webapps – 03:52
- LaunchList – http://launchlist.net/ – checklist for your website launch
- Ninite – http://ninite.com/ – easy setup for a new Windows computer
Support Request Systems – 10:24
- Why?
- Do monthly audits to find common problems that can be fixed to eliminate new requests
- Find common questions and build a knowledge base
- Quicker response with pre-made greeting and signature and even snippits of answers from common questions
- Keeps a history of support questions for each user
- Issue trackers vs Support request trackers
- This is often debated
- It is our thought that if this is a production app/product a support technician should triage the help desk tickets and submit bugs to the issue tracker only if they are actual bugs
- Many issue tracker systems are bad support request trackers and vice versa
- Customers are typically bad at submitting detailed bug reports or feature requests
- Customers can inadvertently give out private information when submitting a bug report
- Many issue tracker systems require a user to be created, this can be problematic for both the user trying to get support and also email integration
- How do you get people to fill them out?
- Provide them outward facing links so they can view the progress and developer/support comments on their ticket.
- Provide email alerts so they feel like they are part of the process and have instant information about their issue.
- Make it as frictionless as possible.
- Make the form as easy as possible to fill out.
- Don’t make them login if you can
- Don’t make them sign up to anything
- Allow them to just email it in
- Make sure every issue goes through a support request ticket system
- Don’t slip up and allow requests to go to another address
- If you are doing phone support and the customer asks a question you can’t answer right away have them send in a support request
- When things go wrong
- Support trackers email each other
- Customer CCs support tracker with colleagues
- Tools
- Wikipedia list of support trackers
