Agencies, Software Businesses, IT support departments all use help desk ticketing systems to efficiently track and resolve tech problems of the users and organizations they serve.
When you or another user at your organization has a support issue and needs tech support, you must have an standardized way to alert your tech or IT department, or in the case of HUB, your digital agency of the issue. In other words, you must know how to submit a help desk ticket.
The HUB Team have put this content together to help our clients learn how to submit the perfect help desk ticket request – and how to help HUB provide you with a better, more efficient service.
Before You Submit Your Request
Try These Self-Service Steps First
Troubleshooting your own issues isn’t frowned upon;more often than not, it is really appreciated. However, you shouldn’t spend all day trying to solve your own issues.
Before you submit a help desk ticket request to HUB, consider a few common troubleshooting steps you can easily take first:
- Ask around to see if the issue is unique to you; if not, has the other person solved the issue
- Do a basic search online to see if someone else has encountered and resolved the issue
- Quit and restart the application where the issue occurred, or log out then log back in again
- Clear your browser cache
- Reboot or restart your device (seriously, this works more often than you may think!)
If none of the self-service steps listed above solve the issue, then submit a request. Tell your help desk team what self-service or troubleshooting steps you’ve taken so far (if any) and the documentation you’ve found during your search. Even if the fix you tried didn’t work, you may have been on the right track. This will ensure your help desk can build off your work, while not wasting time retracing your steps.
Prior to submitting a ticket, whenever possible you should try to replicate this issue on a different computer, operating system, browser, device, location, and/or network.
If you find that the issue is replicable, provide instructions for how to recreate the problem in your ticket. Often times, the help desk must recreate the error to solve it.
1. Don't Panic
Before you write a support ticket, try to stay calm. You might find this piece of advice silly, but staying calm helps you to explain your issue in a systematic manner. When you do, it also allows us to solve the problem as efficiently as possible.
2. Write a concise subject line
The subject line is the most important part of your support ticket. Why? Because it helps in telling us right off the bat what your concern is.
Here are two subject lines. Which one do you think is the best?
- Need help ASAP!!!!
- Need help! I got charged a monthly fee
Without a doubt, subject line B is the best. Both subject lines show a sense of urgency, but the subject line B also reveals the context of the message.
Concise subject lines are short and direct to the point. These are the subject lines that help us help you address your issue right away. Also, when you describe the problem in the subject line, it makes it easier for us to prioritize it, especially if your issue is severe.
3. Use the correct category
Another way that we can prevent frustration on your part is by providing different problem categories you can choose from.
Choosing the category that best identifies the nature of your problem allows us to route your ticket to our team members who specialize in this. We’ll know right away whom to assign your ticket to based on their related skillset.
4. Give a full description of your problem
Now comes the meat of your support ticket. We can’t stress this enough. The more details in your support ticket, the better we can help.
You see, a lot of people want help but fail to include the necessary information needed to make the rest of the process seamless. We may not need every single detail, but we definitely need you to include the right ones.
Here’s what a detailed and honest description should include:
- Brief introduction of yourself – It really helps to know who we’re dealing with. Be sure to include your full name and email address that’s connected to your account.
- Your end goal – What did you want to accomplish before the issue happened? An example would be, “I was about to [end goal] when [problem]…”
- Technical details – Basic details include the web address or URL where the error occurred, the device you used, and your operating system and browser version. If you don’t know yours, you can check supportdetails.com.
- Time and frequency of the issue – Your issue may have happened in the morning, evening, and it may have happened more than once.
- Whether you tried to fix the issue – If you took the initiative to troubleshoot the problem, what steps did you take? Did you try the app on a different computer to see if it works? What was the result?
5. Add a screenshot or screen recording
To back-up your description, we would greatly appreciate if you uploaded a screenshot or screen recording showing the issue. Visuals can speak louder than words.
You’ll want to make sure that your visuals elaborate the description.
It’s very simple to take a screenshot or screen recording. If you want a screen recorder that works for both Mac and Windows, we recommend using Loom. It’s reliable, simple-to-use, and comes with internal audio so you can explain your issue while recording your screen. You can get it for free.
Additional Tips to Remember
As you can see, submitting a support ticket that gets results doesn’t have to be hard. Before you get started, here is some additional advice to keep in mind:
1. It’s fine to reach out after 24 hours.
Know that we’re always doing our best to ensure timely responses. The last thing we want is to keep you waiting.
However, there are certain instances where we handle a very high ticket volume, which explains why we might not be able to tackle your request in 24 hours. If this is the case, please do check your ticket status.
Rest assured that we’re working hard to be more productive while providing the best customer support.
2. Don’t create more than 1 ticket for the same issue.
Last but not least, avoid creating duplicate tickets for the same issue. Duplicates will only delay the process. Instead, check your ticket status.
Conclusion
It’s easy to blame service providers for a bad experience — and as a service provider, we understand where you’re coming from. Truth is, we’re thankful that you chose us and that motivates us to be the best.
However, to be the best in solving your problem, we also need you to help us by writing a good support ticket. Remember that we’re humans too. Let’s keep our communication proactive and positive.