Email Connector Customer Woes

[nattivillin]

If you are working on an issue for a customer, lets say their printer doesn't print. You fix the problem with the printer, but the next day they say the fax up-loader doesn't work.

No big deal, but there is already a ticket open for the printer repair and instead of replying to that ticket, they email support which creates another ticket for essentially the same issue.

You merge those two tickets, and on the third day, they say they would also like to make it so that another user can print to this printer. On the third day they email support directly (again) which creates yet another ticket that you have to merge. If they follow up with a "Thanks" you get a fourth ticket.

We are finding ourselves merging 5-10 tickets a day. You cant force people to reply to an email and if they send in another email you get a new ticket each time.

How is everyone handling this issue?

I am seeing the need for a support portal to eliminate support by email (other than the original request)

[scoplin]

Re: Email Connector Customer Woes

We don't get it that bad, but we do get ticket replies to unrelated issues.

It does boil down to user training. When we ran spiceworks years ago, we could combine tickets in 2-3 clicks. It's a little more with CommitCRM, but I think the extra steps help to keep techs from combining the wrong tickets.

From a user training perspective, what about some friendly phrasing in your open and close templates noting that not replying back to the correct ticket results in delayed responses, etc. Also when talking to users, gently remind them each time. If a user doesn't change their behavior, you can approach the site contact/owner and indicate that the behavior is resulting in lowering your quality of service/response times, etc.

If none of that works, such as it's a single break/fix client that just won't learn, you may have to just suck it up and deal with it if you feel the client income is worth it. If not, it may be best to refer them to their local computer repair store (assuming that's not you guys!).