How do you effectively manage your cases or service requests? What details should you know
to solve cases faster, keep everyone updated on your progress, escalate cases properly when
needed, be sure your cases have excellent notes, and manage your time effectively while
doing all of that?
This was written from a technical support perspective, but much of it will apply to any
kind of case or service request taking group.
When initially taking a case or service request, you must first accept it out of the queue.
Be sure to examine any internal notes, Rules, RMA notes, etc. which may have been placed
into the case. Read the customer description in detail, including looking at any
attachments they may have already added such as configurations, debugs, diagrams, screen
shots, etc.
Contact the customer via the method requested, typically email or phone.
Make detailed notes of any phone conversation including:
Product and Software version
Detailed description of the problem
IP addresses, ports, applications being used, clients affected
Errors seen, symptoms, behaviors reported by clients and the devices involved
Configurations that have been tried
Troubleshooting steps that have already been done
REPEAT this information back to the customer! This is critical.
This helps you to be sure that you understood the problem, that you have all the details
correct, and it also lets the customer know that you were paying attention and you do care
about his or her problem. Many people assume they understood some aspect of the issue, or
something the customer said, but assumptions can create alot of problems in getting to the
resolution of a case.
Always take detailed notes! Always attach what they send to you such as configurations,
traces, diagrams, debugs, etc. The more data, the better. Remember- if your case requeues
to another support person while you are out, the next engineer will have to know what the
problem is, what has been examined, what troubleshooting steps have been done, and what
your expected action plan was before the case requeued. If you dont take good notes, the
customer will be upset when the next engineer has no idea what is going on with their case.
Be sure you make a good problem description and action plan, and keep the action plan
updated throughout the case history, as it will change over time. Different people,
including the customer, the sales team, other engineers, developers, managers, etc. may
look at your case and will need to know what the current action plan is.
Set the case to the appropriate state as it changes. For example, in technical support it
might go from Customer Pending to Engineer pending, Development Pending, RMA pending, etc.
Many companies use status as a metric, and certainly as a way to see where the case is on
its way to resolution.
Use whatever tools you have to help you keep track of your cases and prioritize them.
Whether you have tools available or not, one easy way is to use a text file to keep track
of the cases and their status. Put in the case number, the issue, when you updated it
last, and what you did last. This makes an easy at-a-glance way to see when you last
updated a case, so you know which ones to tackle first. For example:
Case # Problem/Issue Date What you did last 123466 router not passing traffic 10/4 bug #12345, upgrading code next week 456789 servers not replying 10/8 check server default gateway
When filing RMA’s, (Return Material Authorizations) be sure to check entitlement for the
contract, and set correct expectations based on whatever contract the customer has with
you. If you set the wrong expectation and ship a part when the customer was not entitled
to it at that level, serious problems can be created. Also be very sure to check the
contact person, company name, address, email, phone, etc. to be sure you send the part to
the correct place. Never assume the default address in the system is correct. The part
they bought could have been shipped to another site after it was originally ordered from
sales and put on the contract.
When emailing escalation or development for help, be sure you have done your homework
first! If you are not sure what to gather, search through old cases, technical tips on your
web site, old emails from escalation or development aliases, and ask your colleagues or
technical lead for suggestions. Be sure you have gathered all of the basic information
required before contacting development. For example, if a typical troubleshooting case
would require you to verify the configuration first, and then if the configuration proves
to be okay, then run some debugs, and then gather sniffer traces… gather all of that, and
be sure you have actually looked at it all, and *documented* which parts of the
configuration are involved, which lines in the debug or error log show hints of the
problem, which packets in the traces show the odd behavior, etc. before you send it off to
escalation or development. If you do not look through the data first yourself, and
development points out an easy configuration mistake, you have just wasted alot of the
customer’s time gathering more information than was needed back at the “examine
configuration” step, not to mention having embarrassed yourself in front of everyone on the
escalation alias. 
In my company, transfers mean handing off a case directly to a colleague in the same team.
These are done when you go on PTO or are otherwise aware that you will be unavailable.
Transfers should be done by giving the new engineer details of the case, where the status
is at, what you have done so far to troubleshoot, who else is involved such as development,
what you are waiting for from the customer or development, etc. Also, when you accept a
transfer, never trust that the previous engineer caught every possibility, even in
something as simple as the configuration. He or she may have missed something or be
unaware of something which you can find there to solve the issue quickly.
If you are going on vacation or leave, you should consider contacting all of your customers
a few days in advance. Tell them your vacation is coming up, and give them a chance
to work with you during those intervening days, or ask to have their case handed off to
another engineer while you are out. Next, you should set your voicemail to say you will be
gone, and your email to bounce back a vacation message at them with information on how to
requeue the case if needed.
These are just some tips on managing support cases or requests, which I hope you will find
helpful.
Author: Shannon P. Gavin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker
- $25 for $50 Groupon to Color Me Mine Custom Ceramics
- Lita Caseñas : Philippines
- $25 for $50 Worth of Customized Ceramics
Related Posts -
World of Website Promotion Website promotion is a big and ongoing process. Every person who has website should have little knowledge about various elements involved in website promotion even if he had hired a SEO. In this series of articles I had tried to give an overview of all the entities of search...... - Frequency & Monetary Analysis For Subscription Based Services Frequency (F) and Monetary (M) analysis, form together with Recency (R) the framework of RFM analysis. Though recency is the strongest predictor of future behavior, frequency and monetary analysis act in a complementary mode (to recency), to create a complete picture of the Customer behavior. There are many cases......
- Effective Management of Service Requests How do you effectively manage your cases or service requests? What details should you know to solve cases faster, keep everyone updated on your progress, escalate cases properly when needed, be sure your cases have excellent notes, and manage your time effectively while doing all of that?This was written......
- The Perfect Support Hosting Support An IntroductionImagine yourself as a person running a small-medium sized online store that concentrates on affordably prized gift items, and say, it's Christmas time. Everybody is on a shopping spree, and you have been waiting for this vacation to arrive, as it is the time of the......
- Customer Service is a Key Element in Any Virtual Pbx Business Phone System Choice Having plenty of features available when deciding which business phone service, or virtual PBX plan, to go with is great and can be a defining element in deciding which plan to go with. However, there is one other very key element to consider when choosing any plan, or which......
Related Websites - Proper Article Writing Well written keyword optimized articles are now considered to be one of the best ways to direct targeted traffic to your website. The popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote and get fresh content for their sites. The popular search......
-
Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook by Michael Arrington on December 17, 2009 Most of the tech world now considers it a given that Google will be selling its own unlocked phone, called the Nexus One, to customers directly early in 2010. A few stragglers are still...... - Select Right SEO Tool on the Basis of SEO Software Reviews How to buy SEO software? SEO software is in extreme demand today. With increasing demand, the supply is also rising at the same pace. Thus in today’s hi- tech era, the entire market for SEO software is increasing. People tend to ask a number of times that from where they......
-
Federal Reserve Notes Coins and Paper Money -> Paper Money: US -> Large Size Notes -> Federal Reserve Notes One of the most interesting collectibles in the field of coins and paper money are federal reserve notes. However, there is quite a bit of confusion out there about what these notes really are....... -
Think and Act Different to Lose Weight Will you be able to succeed at you weight loss goals this year? Can you lose the weight and become more thin? The answer is Yes. First, though, you need to think right and act right. Here are the new ways to think and act for you to stick with......
Related posts:
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by goalliant: I just post Effective Management of Service Requests on http://ping.fm/1vhoO...