Managing Company Support Tickets 

uality customer service is key to any successful company. Providing top notch value and assistance is essential to earning and keeping your customers.

Here’s a Top 10 List of To Dos to implement for your company to provide quality service:

1. Phone Protocol

How phone calls are handled are extremely important and sets the tone for the entire call. Providing the right amount of welcoming information provides the caller with reassurance that they have reached the correct department, who they are speaking with and they are valued. Implementing a standard script of “Hello, thank you for calling Technical Support, my name is _____, how many I help you today?” is a great way to start off.

2. Clear Explanations

When providing troubleshooting directions, it is best to explain why they are taking you down this path. You should also carefully take the time to listen to the customer when they try to explain they have already done this or why it hasn’t worked, etc. Providing clear explanations helps alleviate the feeling that the technician is just giving the customer the runaround and doesn’t really understand the customer’s problem.

3. Accurate Ticket Notes

It is extremely essential that your technicians write accurate ticket notes into the system that can be referenced by other staff members if the customer calls in again. It is extremely frustrating for the customer to have to call in with an ongoing problem and find out that there is no record or very little record of their last call and no history of the problem and they have to start over from scratch again and waste a lot of their time and your techs time. On each ticket note, include contact name, time, procedures undertaken, results, error codes, serial #s, action items the customer is to take and reasons, and action items the technician is to undertake and reasons.

4. Properly Read Ticket Notes

When taking a customer call, it is crucial for the technicians to properly read the customers history and not asking them to repeat what the issue was or is again, instead of taking the time to look into the system to find out. Make sure your technicians understand from the customers’ perspective and take the time to prepare themselves properly.

5. Investigate Past Tickets

Depending on the issue, it might be necessary to undertake some investigative action on the part of the technician and look into what past issues the customer has had to solve the current issue. If it is a reoccurring issue, perhaps this will help determine why the problem is happening (ie. equipment is a perpetual lemon, or it is an environmental issue hampering the equipment).

6. Properly Escalate Cases

Know when to take the case to the next level. It is important that your technicians are supported from management and that they can confidently escalate the problem onto the next level when they can’t resolve the issue. Holding on to the case and getting know where with it does not help the customer out and demonstrates incompetence even more.

7. Open Internal Communication

Your Technical Help Desk should have open internal communication that is easily accessible when needed for those escalating problem calls that need to be transferred to the next higher up level. It is never good when you have a major customer issue that needs to be dealt with and you leave the customer hanging and tell them that someone will call them back.

8. Empower Technicians

Allow your Technicians to take ownership of the cases and provide personal follow-up until the problem is resolved. Have them routinely call the customer back for status updates and to make sure everything continues to work.

9. Establish Standard Policies

It is important that all the technicians follow and enforce similar policies and guidelines. It can be frustrating when one technician will issue a RMA after 2 failure incidences, but another will accept it after one. It creates confusion and frustration for the customer and they don’t know where they stand when they call in and speak to different technicians.

10. Product and Market Knowledge

Knowledgeable technicians not only well versed in your products but in your competitors as well, makes the best technicians. They can offer an additional information and guidance to customers when they have questions about the product. This really makes your technicians standout to your customer and provide an extra layer of value added service.

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