HELP US – HELP YOU
WRITING THE PERFECT HELP DESK TICKET #
While no one really wants to contact customer support, eventually it happens to all of us. It’s crucial to understand what the problem is in order to be able to solve it as soon as possible. So here is a good document on how to create the perfect Help Desk ticket that will get fast results.
Try self-service steps first #
Troubleshooting your own issues isn’t frowned upon; many times it’s appreciated! However, you shouldn’t spend all day trying to solve your own issues. Before you submit a help desk ticket request, consider a few common troubleshooting steps you can easily take first:
- Search your support knowledge base, a solution might already be documented.
- 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
- 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.
How to write a descriptive summary #
Use wording in the subject of your email or the summary of the web form that states what the specific problem is and what you are seeing. Try using something like this:
Cannot log in to computer. Says account is locked
Instead of this:
Help, computer problem???
Focus on the details #
When the help desk team looks at the first ticket they can immediately route it to someone who can assist with a log in or account issue. The second line requires us to open the ticket and read the details.
Nothing will get your issue resolved more quickly than providing as much detail as possible the very first time you reach out with a support request. Don’t wait for your support rep to ask questions, give them the information up-front and you’ll get much better results.
Here’s a list of things to consider when crafting your initial support ticket:
- When exactly did you first notice the problem?
- Have any updates been applied to the software in question, or any related software, recently?
- If your issue involves an ERP-integration – Have you changed large amounts of data in your ERP recently?
- Have you made any changes in your Content Management System (WebDriver)?
- Can the issue be replicated on multiple computers, and/or multiple mobile devices?
- Is your problem happening in one browser, or all of them?
- Do you see any specific error messages?
If you have followed some troubleshooting steps already, it can be very helpful to share what steps you have taken and their results.
A picture can be worth a thousand words #
While a detailed email is incredibly helpful for troubleshooting technical support issues, oftentimes a screenshot is even more helpful. One of the first things we do when troubleshooting issues is to try and recreate the behavior. By including a screenshot of the issue you are seeing, our technical support agents will be able to look for the same things.
NOTE: For windows 10 users, just click on the windows key and start typing windows snippet. You can use this program to screenshot the error on your PC.
