New Ticket Interface

[Brendan]

Can you guys provide us with some feedback on the new ticket system interface? It is currently in place at rocketsupport.com. The idea behind it is to either answer the questions in advance if possible, or to prompt the users for all of the necessary information to fix the problem in advance so we do not have to go back and fourth asking questions and delaying ticket resolution.

-Brendan

[manperez]

Originally posted by support
Can you guys provide us with some feedback on the new ticket system interface? It is currently in place at rocketsupport.com. The idea behind it is to either answer the questions in advance if possible, or to prompt the users for all of the necessary information to fix the problem in advance so we do not have to go back and fourth asking questions and delaying ticket resolution.

-Brendan

Brendan:
in my humble experience, many of the support techs don't read our tickets we send nor the history of the trouble ticket. You are a glorious exception in that you read, think, and answer or ask another question.

And as for answering questions in advance, personally I've found the knowledge base to be somewhat limited, as it answers only simple questions. The Forum can be somewhat more helpful, but you have to do looooooooong searches for the appropriate note.

One suggestion: find good answers in the Forum (as with the IMAP question, the possibility of installing our own email servers from yesterday) and include them in the knowledge base... then the knowledge base would be much more valuable because it would not only have the latest info, but it would be constantly growing. :D

[SnakEyez]

Well I am going to second manperez's idea. I believe that the knowledge base needs to be expanded. Honestly I think something else that could be added to it are links to other sites that may define technical terms for first timers so that when they read some of the stuff they do not get too lost with it. The more specific stuff becomes, many of times, the more technical the answer becomes so this is why I say that.

Also I saw a unique server-side program awhile back that Sega had used a long time ago with a gaming server that completely failed (but that is not the point). The point was that it was much like a telephone support. It was an all-live support system and people would just have to be patient and wait for answers. Sometimes I feel this may be a better way to go about things. It allows for a conversation whereas the tickets require time between replies and sometimes, from what people have stated on these boards, the time is unaccetpable. I know that you seem to have a decent sized support staff, so maybe starting some shifts would be necessary to do this, have some working shifts to cover all hours of the day. Sometimes this can be time consuming but sometimes it helps gets problems solved quicker and instead of problems dragging on for days it allows problems to be solved in maybe an hour or two at most. In this I am recommending that a member of the support staff should work on no more than one customer at a time. I feel that although this may not seem like the most efficient way to do go about this situation, it has obviously worked for large companies such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T which use this system for phone support. I think if people knew that they were waiting to talk to a live person they would, hopefully, agree to completely do away with the ticket system and work with live support staff as the only way of contact.

[ogoy]

SnakeEyez,

My only prob with your idea is that sometimes I don't need an answer immediately, and I don't want to have to sit there waiting for an answer. I just want to send in a ticket and check for an answer after work.

[JoeF]

It doesn't need to be live chat, they just need to keep us informed. Just tell the support guys that if a ticket will take a while to resolve, reply to the ticket saying so, but keep it open.

[manperez]

The problem with "live" support is that it costs a lot of money. The e-mail Ticket system allows HR (and other organizations, including me) to answer mail when the techs are available. That means that someone like Brendan can look over a Ticket, check out the Forums, etc., instead of being tied down to a phone or chat line.

As for links to other sites, they are useful, yet they may give the impression that HR is shrugging off the support on someone else, as happened to me about a year ago when I was trying to figure out how to use the MySQL in my control panel.

Ideally, the Knowledgebase should include clear and precise "How-To" instructions for at least each of the elements of the Control Panel.

The other observation I have is that the Knowledgebase and Ticket System should make full use of the Forum: the Forum has an area for HR official information that is not used appropriately (for example, with the e-mail server and program change).