Support ticket handling
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Hi all,
let me write you a bit about what experience I have with the support and ticketing by JF to see if I'm the only one expecting this to work better.I've opened 5 tickets to support after release, all for entirely different issues I've found, with detailed explaination and screenshots attached.
Two of them were closed without a comment, in a third it was said that they "merged" the two tickets into the third one but will keep the other two open. Here's their explaination:Sorry as a follow up we also merged your ticket 49970 into this one so will also show as closed but will now have this report under this ticket (49754) that we'll investigate.
We'll keep 49915 and 49909 as separate meaning you current have these open reports under 49754, 49915 and 49909 and come back to you soon after investigating for you.After asking them how that would make handling any better since then one ticket contained 3 different issues, they (Craig) said it would be "the way they work". Also talking about emails that I sent, seemingly losing the context of the different tickets:
Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately, your emails are to overlapping and making things extremely complicated to follow and understand.
Please can you create one brand new ticket with everything listed as easy to read as you can.
This will help speed up the time.
I accepted the state just to see now the ticket which contained the 3 merged issues being closed without ANY of them being resolved, without any comment.
I opened it again pointing to the original, unresolved issue(s) and now he asked me what the issue is about (after! closing it) sigh.To me it seems the Support is somehow not able to track the separate tickets and basically missing the point of separate tickets to track their individual status and resolution.
Does Support (or Craig) not have access to the ticketing system and thus gets all the mail notifications in random order? That's the only way I can explain myself how he could talk about too many Emails and being confused in their order.
I can see each ticket with it's individual history in the support system. Why is Craig not able to?Is all this confusion somehow beneficial? I'm working in IT and NEVER have seen someone misusing a ticketing system for support for their own disadvantage. Customers reporting detailed individual descriptions end up being left speechless.
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I'm afraid that's the way we work. Unless the tickets were for five different products or five different setups, it is easier to deal with each customer in turn.
Remember, we have many different customers and it is much easier to keep track of where we are with handling each customer if their queries are in one place.We use Freshdesk, which is a proprietary, industry-standard, helpdesk tool and it one of its key USPs is that you can 'merge' tickets. Some companies might need to merge tickets by subject or department and, in our case, to keep all those from the same customer in one place.
It's why we don't support by forum - nigh on impossible to keep track of multiple threads and posts etc.Hope that clarifies things. If you have five bugs from the same piece of software (or setup) it easier to get them on one ticket than five.
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Hi Derek,
thanks for clarification, it's basically totally different than others work (see Zendesk at MS).
If combining everything into one ticket is the way to go, a hint or HowTo would be great.BUT that means that tickets should not be set to resolved unless all issues mentioned in the ticket are resolved. And as I wrote that happened to me - a ticket is resolved despite none of the issues there is fixed and after reopening I was even asked about what I actually mean with the ticket.
It's pretty confusing since I as a customer see each ticket separately and cannot follow what happens on your side. I see tickets being "merged" without it being reflected in some way for me - just that other tickets get closed due to this merge.
If something is merged, then I suggest the support should combine the ticket texts/descriptions since otherwise I get lost about which issue is solved and which isn't.I hope you see the issue that I have with this approach and from what I can read on forums, everyone is opening tickets for each issue separately.
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@copper
Zendesk works much the same as Freshdesk. Not really much to choose between them. In a previous incarnation we did first/second line support contracted out for a large number of companies - ranging from games companies to book and electrical goods retailers. We have used bespoke systems and off-the-shelf systems and while I am not really much of a fan of Freshdesk, it works very well for a business like Just Flight.Trust me - we know what we are doing. Multiple tickets for the same customer is as confusing as it would be to have one ticket for a number of different customers. Others may do things differently, but it really should be judged on the quality of what we serve up.
I may be wrong, but I'm assuming you wwere reporting issues with the recently released PA-28? If so, our team have collated all the various issues, sifted out what is user-based (RTFM), system based (two installs etc) and bugs. The information has been filtered back to the developers and we no have a comprehensive patch.
We're not a large Apple-type outfit that have AI bots responding to your every whim and tracking you to your breakfast table to report on progress (or lack of it) but we are very into aeroplanes and trains and do our best to ensure that if people have issues with our software we can get them up and running. -
@Derek Got it, I'd really like to report the issues in a way that works best for you while keeping me somehow up to date whether an issue is considered correct to be worked on.
I'm still not sure how to report additional bugs if I already have a ticket (adding the additional ones via comments in the existing ticket will probably get confusing as well). So if there was some landing page before reporting a ticket guiding customers on how to properly report the way you need it would be really helpful.
Yeah, the tickets I created were on the PA-28R for MSFS (e.g. #49754 which was the "merged" one).
It seems like Freshdesk is somehow disconnected from the UI that the customers see and thus creates some confusion on my side.
I'll try to work it out how to report multiple issues. The goal is to have them fixed after all :) -
@copper To be fair, we generally don't have many instances of multiple issues. Do whatever suits you best and let us deal with it. If it means you raise ten tickets and we merge them into one, then that should be fine, shouldn't it? Whatever works.
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@copper As a Zendesk admin and support lead for a software company, if two tickets are not for the same specific issue, we wouldn't merge them. That's an interesting way to use a ticketing system and I very much get your confusion given my experience. That said, we've also managed to upset some folks with the way we handle tickets (for instance, we close tickets that are added to the dev backlog as they turn into Jira tickets and that freaks our customers out) so... what can ya do. Every company's gonna have their own process and whatever helps your devs get the thing done is what matters.
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@LostPilot said in Support ticket handling:
As a Zendesk admin and support lead for a software company,
Keep an eye on our SM feeds. You might be just what we're looking for.
As an aside, regarding merging of tickets, it really depends on the subject.
Customer A - submits ticket about paint textures on wings, another one about colour of propeller and a third one about incorrect seat material, for the same newly released aircraft.
Support - ascertain there is not an RTFM fix and that they're probably bugs, merge the lot and pass to developers.Customer B - submits ticket on paint textures on wings and another one about RPM gauge going backwards and a third one about hearing sound from a multi-engine jet coming from his GA aircraft.
Support - stick first one in the 'probable bugs' pile to be fixed by devs and merge the other two for support to deal with, because they are likely to be both related to his installation or setup.Make sense? There are no rules, really. You just have to treat each case individually. If you have a new release it is often simpler to merge all the 'possible bug' tickets from a customer than try to herd cats and treat each one as if it was coming from a different person.
