Freshdesk [MERGE]

Generating a New Issue

1. Should you be the person responsible for tackling the ticket, be sure to get as much information and/or clarity from the client as possible before proceeding e.g. screenshots, steps to replicate etc.

2. Conduct and initial investigation of the problem or request, making notes as you go along.

3. Once you have a suitable response ready and the time required to resolve or complete the task, communicate this to the client by way of courtesy; however if the issue is a “quick win” skip this step entirely.

   • If your initial investigation is taking longer than expected, a courtesy reply should be sent to keep the client appraised of the situation; using good judgement to influence how much time passes before doing so.

4. Carry out the work required to tackle the problem or complete the request, utilising a second pair eyes from a colleague if possible/where necessary using good judgement.

   • If there has been a lull in implementing the solution, a courtesy reply should be sent to keep the client appraised of the situation; using judgement to influence how much time passes before sending this update.

5. If the client confirms that they are happy with the resolution to the ticket, close the issue down, or respond to the ongoing conversation and await a response.

6. Ensure that the time spent investigating, replying to and completing the task outlined in the ticket is logged correctly in Harvest.

NOTE: be mindful that certain customers will have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) defining response and solution times.

Statuses

First of all, let’s take a moment to become familiar with the different statuses that can be assigned to items in the Support Desk.

• New: brand new issues that have not yet been triaged.

• Triaged: issues that has been assessed, has an associated GitHub/Trello task, and is now awaiting assignment.

• Investigation: issues that have been assessed, and does not immediately require a GitHub/Trello task due to it requiring additional investigation, or because it is a simple non-dev task that can be resolved quickly.

• Waiting for Staff: issues that have been assigned to an Engineer, and is either pending the completion of a piece of work to resolve it, or a reply from the Engineer as part of an ongoing discussion.

• Waiting for Client: issues that have been responded to by a member of the team, and is now with the client for a response. These may be continuing a discussion, or awaiting confirmation of closure.

• Resolved: issues that have been marked as resolved, after explicit or implicit confirmation, or after a period of time has passed without a response.

Priorities

Every ticket requires a priority assignment to ensure that the team understand the importance of the issue, allowing them to respond in an appropriate timeframe e.g. straight away, within 24 hours, this week etc.

NOTE: a courtesy response acknowledging receipt should be sent for all new tickets, regardless of priority.

• Urgent: issues that demand an immediate (<2hr) follow-up from the team, taking priority over all other issues.

  • Issues should only be marked as Urgent if a given website or mission-critical piece of functionality is unavailable or broken, or if the requested piece of work is extremely time sensitive.

  • In either case, the aim should be to resolve/complete the issue by the end of the business day or sooner.

• High: issues that demand an elevated (<4hrs) follow-up from the team, taking priority over all non-urgent issues.

  • Issues should only be marked as High if the performance or availability of a website or a mission-critical piece of functionality is sufficiently impaired, or if the requested piece of work needs to completed relatively quickly.

  • In either case, the aim should be to resolve/complete the issue within 24hrs of it being raised.

• Normal: issues that should be followed-up to within 8hrs of being raised, and should fit into the current or next sprint (depending when they are raised) as part of the normal flow of work.

  • These issues should typically be resolved within 5 working days of being raised if applicable, but some may be open for a considerably longer period.

• Low: issues that should be followed-up to within 24hrs of being raised, and should be picked up as and when it is deemed necessary as determined by weekly sprint planning sessions.

  • These should should typically be resolved within 10 working days of being raised if applicable, but some may be open for a considerably longer period.

Filters

There are a number of standard and custom (a.k.a “Saved”) filters available in Sirportly to help narrow down the visible tickets based on different critieria. We’ll focus on the Saved filters here.

• My Tickets: this is exactly the same as the default My Tickets filter, except it has the Priorty column added, making it more useful.

• Assigned Tickets: tickets that are currently assigned to a member of staff, waiting resolution or a reply in an ongoing discussion.

• Unassigned Tickets: tickets that are not currently assigned to a member of the team for whatever reason; could be that they are fair game to be picked up by anyone, or that assignment is pending.

• Pending Triage: tickets that have not yet been assessed and triaged, which will result in an appropriate work request being generated.

• Pending Investigation: tickets that have been flagged as requiring additional investigation; see Statuses.

• Pending Admin Response: tickets that have been assigned to a member of the team responsible for PM, accounts, admin etc and require either a resolution or a reply in an ongoing discussion.

• Pending Engineer Response: tickets that have been assigned to a member of the engineering team and require either a resolution or a reply in an ongoing discussion.

• Pending Client Response: tickets that are awaiting a response from the client, whether as part of an ongoing discussion, or to provide feedback/sign-off relating to a piece of work or fix that has been carried out for them.

• <CLIENT NAME> Tickets: tickets that relate to specific clients, usually on the basis of their email domain name, or specific names and/or email addresses. These filters tend to be created for clients that are of the highest value, or generate the most support requests.

• Resolved Tickets: tickets that have been closed and marked as resolved, either due to the issue, work request or conversation being resolved, or because no response has been received from the client for a period of time; usually 5+ days but this varies.

Manual-Assignment of Client Tickets

In some cases it may be required that you create a ticket on behalf of a client. This is the case when:

1. A client may email you directly with an issue, this should be forwarded to the Support Desk email

2. When handing over new features or changes to them for testing or review

Forwarding an email to the Support Desk

If you forward a ticket to the Support Desk this will automatically assign the ticket to your email address meaning you will need to change the assignee via the Sirportly system

To re-assign a ticket:

1. Open the ticket

2. Go to the ‘Contacts’ tab

3. Select “Edit Contacts”

4. Remove your details from the “Enter the name of the contact” option and replace with the clients name, if they are already active on the Support Desk they will show up in the list of contacts

5. Once you have changed this also check to remove any unnecessary “Additional Recipients” from the “Cc” list

6. Now you can select “Done” the ticket will be reassigned

As a next step you need to relay to the client that the ticket is now active and is assigned to them. Simply write up a quick reply in the system and email over a confirmation that the issue is logged.

You should also review the Status and Priority at this time and change accordingly.

Creating a new Ticket from inside the Support Desk

This can be done using the “Create Email Ticket” in the system. Simply create the issue as you would with a normal email but not the following settings:

• Ensure “Make Do: Support” is selected and not “Make Do: Enquiries”

• The “From” name should be your email address

• These type of tickets will automatically set to HIGH priority, once created you need to change this accordingly