Support: Ticket Status's & Internal Note TE's

Owned by Patrick Sayegh
Last updated: Aug 28, 2023
4 min read

TLDR: Below will go over ticket status’s and a suggested TE’s related to internal notes.

 

Why: There has been too many inconsistencies with the queue, with tickets staying in specific statuses and no one having the context to what is happening and how to move forward. To help with support, and anyone working on tickets, having a process in place will allow anyone to take over a ticket to get it across the finish line. This will also help with our current metrics, set better expectations for merchants/clients and allow us to be in a good spot for when we scale as a company. Not only having a proper ticket workflow, but including internal notes more often allows for visitability for anyone to jump and help. This will help avoid information gate-keeping, and delayed responses on tickets.

 

Status - Open

  1. Assignee takes a “New” ticket from the queue

  2. Merchant replies to the ticket

  3. Assignee responds back in the ticket and manually sets it to “Open”

  4. Ticket is re-opened by an automation in Zendesk

Workflow for Open Tickets:

  1. Assigning a “New” ticket, turns it to “open” please respond on same day with 1 or 2 actions

    1. Work on the ticket as normal, and send out a reply related to the issue

      1. Ticket Status would depend on resolution/next steps outcome and should reflect as such

We should rarely have tickets left as “Open”, as this can inflate our metrics, cause a poor experience with our merchants and further confusion with folks who might be needing to know how we can help this merchant resolve their issue. If you leave tickets set to “open” as part of your workflow - we can look at creating another status category to help with this.

 

Status - Open (New Assigned)

  1. Ticket is New

  2. Assignee assigns ticket to their queue to work on later

Workflow for Open (New Assigned)

  1. When a new ticket comes in, we might want to take it to work on later

  2. Right now, we do this and it shows as open which inflates our metrics

  3. Using “Open New Assigned)” is under the “onhold category” in Zendesk and should not impact our Open tickets metrics

  4. If we use this, please either respond to the merchant as normal or send out a reply to the merchant to let them know we are looking into it if we need more time

 

Status - Pending:

  1. Needing more information from a merchant and awaiting a reply

Workflow for Pending Tickets:

  1. First touch reply from assignee to merchant

  2. Assignee needing more info from merchant, sets the ticket as “pending”

  3. Ticket re-opens in 48 hours

  4. Assignee uses a “pending - followup” macro in Zendesk

  5. Sets the ticket back to “pending”

  6. Trigger auto-solves in 72 hours

This helps with setting proper expectations if are are consistently doing this, as it will allow merchants to be held accountable with giving us more information to help with their issue. It will also help show that support is trying and making attempts to continually follow up and give them a chance to get back to us.

 

Status - OnHold:

Tickets showing as “on-hold” are for:

  1. Waiting on internal conversations/actions

    1. Jira

    2. Slack convos

Workflow for OnHold Tickets:

  1. Work through the ticket as normal

  2. If we cannot resolve the ticket, there are blockers, bugs etc.

  3. We inform the merchant of this, and ensure we do not provide a specific ETA

  4. Set “outcome” to both or one of “internal action required”, “jira created”, “mapping request” etc.

  5. Set the ticket “on-hold”

  6. On-hold tickets will re-open in 8 days

  7. Agent will look for updates from Slack or in the Jira and apply the update in the ticket as an internal note

  8. Sets it back to “on-hold”

On-hold tickets can be in this state for an undetermined amount of time, and we should be checking in on internal movement related to these tickets every 8 days and leaving an internal note to inform anyone that there has not been any movement. After 3 months of no movement on a ticket, despite our best efforts, we should solve the ticket.

 

Internal Notes TE

Internal notes are handy, as they provide context into what is happening and where we are at to help resolve the merchants issue. What is currently happening is that conversations on specific tickets happen outside of Zendesk, and nothing is tied back to a ticket with information on what was done and what we are waiting for to move things along.

Benefits on Internal Notes:

  1. Captures knowledge on issues we might see again on other tickets

  2. Informs anyone who might be looking at the ticket on what was happening, so they don’t need to dig further into or ask in “slack”

  3. Can speed up resolution times

  4. Merchants don’t always link orders, or relevant information in tickets - so we can use this an opportunity to provide that context to know what and where we are looking at

  5. Tickets can be complex and have a lot of information, internal notes gives space for a TLDR that sums up the issue, which can speed things along for internal teams jumping in on the ticket to help

    TLDR:
    Merchant Internal Link:
    What Is Happening:
    What Is Expected:
    Admin Reference Links:
    Internal Links:
    Next Steps: