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Telephone, Live Chat, snail mail, fax or drop-in. These five protocols can be used for giving technical support to your clients. None of the five, however, are as efficient as a ticketing support system. It works, you just have to know how to control it.

Operating a ticket system can seem like a fine art, but it doesn’t have to be. These five pointers on how to operate yours successfully should streamline your business immensely. They work, all pointers were drawn up over five years ago and have been a backbone of Signature Support ever since. Well, that’s the subliminal messaging done so let’s get down to business:

1: Know your attacker

Ok, so the person creating the ticket (hopefully) isn’t an attacker, but it’s a nice subtitle. The meaning of the title i, I hope, rather self explanatory. The client will have some sort of a history with you. Is he or she overly-anxious when creating tickets? Is everything “doomsday” in their words, even if it’s actually just something like “my ISP tells me port 25 is banned. What to do, what to do?”. Keep tabs on your clients. When they create a ticket, keep in mind (or on record) the subtleties of the ticket. This will 1) teach you how best to handle the client and 2) help other techs work through the issues at hand. Knowing your clients, their behavior patterns, their personality and, of course, their name, can give you a great advantage when dealing with a support instance.

2 ) KISS

Now, I don’t mean to call you or your clients stupid, quite the contrary infact.  The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a great one. It’s self explanatory: Don’t beat about the bush, keep your answers clear, concise and simple. Clients don’t want to have to pick up a tech-dictionary just to decipher what you told them. Instead of saying “apache crashed because the max connection limit was reached by another clients web site”, try “the software our servers use reached its limit for the number of people who can connect to a web site at the same time, <apology>”. More often than not, if you tell a client that “apache crashed”, they will think that a helicopter just nose dived. They don’t (and have no reason to) know any better.

3: Wrap it up

We’ve all had them, the tickets that just keep going, and going, and going. There’s no need for it. When you answer a ticket, be professional but remember, too, that you are the helper. You, for lack of better terminology, are in charge of the situation. Make sure that you answer each request in an authoritative manner. Read the ticket before you answer, otherwise you’ll find the ticket system looks more like the logs from an Instant Messenger log file. Wrap each support instance up as soon as you believe it to be completed. If it’s a general question about a feature, answer it and close out the ticket with a polite “if you have any further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us in the future,” or words to that effect. This brings me on to our next point:

4: No task left behind

If you’ve been on a web hosting forum lately, you’ve seen the spamtastic posts that go something like “XYZ Hosting Co answered my ticket in, n word of a lie, 28 seconds!!”. Yes, once in a blue moon you can get lucky with a ticket, you can refresh the ticket screen at just the right moment, see a one-line question and have it answered within 30 seconds. It’s possible, but totally unrealistic. People rarely ask one-liners. That goes against human nature. People ramble (like me).

So, don’t gloss over the questions, READ THEM. You’ll thank yourself when the testimonials (and monthly cheques) roll in from another satisfied customer. Carefully go through the ticket and pick out the tasks at hand. Complte them one by one and inform the client. They’ll be happy you completed the tasks requested and you’ll be happy that the ticket is, in omst cases, closed with a “thank you” from the client. Remember, though, nothing says “thank you” like keeping a subscription active. Don’t expect everyone to literally say the words.

5: “And our survey says…”

I can not stress enough the advantages of having a survey system. The only way you, your staff and your entire process is going to become better is with the help of your clients. Create a simple survey, ask your clients about their experiences, keep it simple, make it quick, but make sure that you ask “how can we make our service better”. Invariably, you’ll only have a small percentage of your client base actually fill a survey out. It’s important to remember, though, that somewhere in those survey answers could be a gem, something to make your company stand out, something to help you get more clients and, most importantly, something to make your existing clients even happier.