Support suggestions

[Abomination]

• If there were a way to mark a ticket as low priority I would use it. Some tickets are not as important as others, and I'd hate to think my ticket kept someone from getting help when they needed it more.
• I would be great if the Live Support Chat icon still existed in the client area even when technicians were not online. I thought my account settings changed because for a while during regular business hours last week there was no icon at all. I completely understand if they are busy and not available.
• It would also be good if a customer could ask the question even when technicians are offline, so people could ask questions then the tech could answer them when they had time. Like a regular support topic on a forum.
• Could it be possible that an even more efficient method of support is to have a forum available just for people with active phone/Live Support Chat support? Customers could start up a topic, ask a question, then get a reply from anyone in support?
  
  

Just thinking about other ways to do a few things. I mean them with the best possible intent.

[AndyF]

I like the initial idea of setting a ticket to 'low priority' , perhaps for a casual enquiry etc.

Not being staff I can't really say about the other points you suggest :)

[Tony.M]

I like the Live chat idea and low priority idea :)

[Bobby D]

I like the forum idea, although it could end up like the peer-to-peer section if it is not moderated. The only concern is the exchange of details in forum threads. ;]

[3DKiwi]

I like the idea of a low priority flag as well. I've had IPS look at a couple of niggling things lately and I wasn't bothered too much if it took a while to look at them.

The main thing would not to add any additional work load to already busy people. What I would like to see is some tidying up of how things are when someone posts a support ticket on Friday night then starts getting agitated if they haven't had a response over the weekend and lets of some steam in the forums. This is not a good look at times.

Nigel / 3DKiwi

[rastaX]

Ummm, I usually just flag my ticket with **Low Priority** in the title. :whistle:

On second thought, doesn't seem to work too well. My tickets still get done pretty quickly......... :lol:

[Mark]

Thanks for the feedback :)

We're always looking for ways to deal with support requests more efficiently (for example, the recent introduction of live chat) and will continue to do so. Your suggestions are appreciated :)

[bfarber]

The only suggestion I'm not too sure about is the forum based 'official' support. That would then mean support staff have to monitor two areas, and I'm pretty sure we can all agree a forum-based support option would get pretty busy pretty quickly. I think that would be difficult to manage, myself.

Some nice ideas. Certainly some things to consider. :)

[Abomination]

The fist suggestion of being able to mark a ticket lower priority, was in regard to everyone who has access to support tickets.

The last 3 suggestions were in regard to the people who used to get phone support, which presumably would be a much smaller number of people than had access to support tickets.

In the client area there is Live Chat, and as of late because everyone is so busy, many times when I go into the client area during regular business hours there is no Live Chat icon displayed. If I could enter that Live Chat and ask a question, then when a tech person does have the time, they could give an answer. Ideally the 'sound alert' would let me know that someone has given a reply, that does not seem to be working for me at this time.

My guess would be once Nexis gets completed you may start using that. :)


From my point of view, any way at all to leave a message, and be alerted to a reply, is a type of 'support forum'. There are many things to consider.

[Abomination]

Also, it seems there is much anxiety regarding when a ticket would be worked on. For instance, when will a conversion take place?

My term for those things is managing expectations.

If there is some way to let the people asking for tech support to check on status, that would be fantastic. One hosting provider I use has a "you are currently 8th in line, and you're expected hold time is 14 minutes" type of message when calling them. From a functionality view point that is fantastic because I can go do other things during that time.



Wish I had a specific suggestion in that regard, but I do not know enough about how support tickets work. >_<

[Lindy]

In regards to Live Chat - we have been so busy with 3.1 support, install and upgrade requests - even after we've added several new support members, the workload is overwhelming. I've asked the techs to focus on tickets instead of Live Chat right now - but rest assured, when the work volume returns to normal, we will be using live chat more.

Thank you for your suggestions - we'll certainly be discussing them and determining what improvements we can make. :)

[Enkidu]

I would love to see some sort of categorization for what you're asking a support for. For instant, you could have a drop down box where you could choose the type of your question. So for example, we could have the following cat.:

1- upgrade request.
2- DB errors.
3- skin issue.
4- 404s, 500s

etc.

The benefit being: the support team could themselves assign a priority level based on the issue you're having. Users might abuse the system if you let them decide which is low priority and which is high priority.