Getting Customers to Raise a Support Request with all the right information

Why bother at all?

Almost every profession in the service industry these days is about helping someone with a problem or issue they have, and we as service professionals always want to help fix an issue but we often get deeper into another problem ourselves when we don’t know the details of the problem the customer is facing because they haven’t given us enough information.

Imagine that, instead of your usual Saturday Cafe Brunch, you went into a local Chinese restaurant and ordered a Sichuan-Style Stir-Fried Chicken for a change. You have a severe nut allergy which you didn’t tell the waiter about and ordered anyway. What would you get? An immediate allergic reaction if you ate it and potentially being sick (and even death depending on how severe your allergy is) if you didn’t treat it, right?

We as customers aren’t always perfect ourselves when we want stuff done, so how can we expect our customers to be?

What? The Problem

Do you recall when a client emailed you or logged an issue about a specific error or that something in their computer or software system isn’t working but didn’t give you enough context or ‘steps to reproduce the problem’? I do. I’ve been getting these emails every day for the past 10 years or more.

You would have completed the implementation 6 or 9 months ago and have moved on from that project into at least 2 or 3 more projects and probably in the middle of going live with another one.

You want to help, but how can you when they don’t give you enough context or didn’t come through the right channels i.e. the support portal or email address.

The obvious and most used methods are

• to reply politely to the customer asking for more information each time or get on a screen share session to investigate the issue
• if it’s not your job to solve it cause you’ve moved on from the project or not part of the support team, saying that you’re busy and that someone else will look into it, or;
• ask your manager to ask the customer to send these issues through the right channels with enough information in it so you don’t have to go back and forth asking questions before you can finally identify the root cause before solving the problem.

The manager might implement a Support Portal with a lengthy Request form full of fields asking questions, so the customer fills in all of the details you need and the issue is presented to you with all the information in a silver platter like a Senior Business Analyst with 10 years of experience wrote the task and handed it over to you for execution.

At least, that’s the dream, right? But how often does it happen in reality?

Customers usually don’t like logging into a Support Portal and fill out a lengthy and complicated Support Request form each time they want something fixed. Think about it. Would you? Remember the Sichuan Chicken with Peanuts incident?

They’ve got other things to worry about in their business than worry about (not to mention the system issue that’s now delaying things further for them) than filling out your lengthy request form that would probably take longer than it takes for you to go and fix the issue.

They’d rather email you saying “Hey, this is broken, can you please fix it?” thinking you would already know what to do cause they trust you are the best person to do it.

How? Method

Obviously, use a template! What kind of template? One which gives you the information you need, to get to the issue fast and fix the problem, and make it accessible in one click! (i’ll $how you how to do this too;)

There are hundreds if not thousands of bug report templates out there, find one that works for you and your organisation’s customer support process and information requirements — if you can’t find one, write one that’s simple for the customer to fill enough information for you to get to the bottom of the issue and where a coordinator or first-level or admin support is involved, they can triage this to you after filling in the correct forms and details.

Here’s an example of what I have used and re-used for years, for, getting the information I needed from customers who have issues with their finance and integrated systems that my team supports:

To: support@companyname.com (The Support Email Address)
CC: support_coordinator@companyname.com (every company usually has one who is very good at what they do i.e admin and coordination but probably don’t know where to triage each issue because they’re not product experts)

account_manager@companyname.com (this could be yourself, the team leader, project manager or even CEO — decide depending on who would need to know)

Subject: CHANGE THIS to one line about the problem or request e.g. Can’t print in black and white

Describe the bug/issue: A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

Component (please tell us which system or app you are experiencing issues with):
• Software [e.g. Microsoft Word, Excel]
• System or Screen [e.g. Canon Printer]

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behaviour:
1. Go to ‘…’
2. Click on ‘….’
3. Scroll down to ‘….’
4. See error

Expected behaviour: A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.
Screenshots If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.
Additional context Add any other context about the problem here.

Make it an accessible ‘One-Click Request Form’

This time around I decided to take a step further by automating the process and making the experience (hopefully) a little bit better for the customer where they don’t have to keep going back to look for the issue template I sent them weeks or months ago, copy that into an email, find the correct support email address etc. before they can get to writing down quickly and sending the issue that needs to be solved.

I used an Online mailto code and markup generator to create a shortcut that I can send for customers to either bookmark in their browser or save to their desktop for when they want to report an issue.

The tool I used was https://mailtolink.me/

Pasted my bug report email template into this, put in the addresses I wanted the email sent to and myself in the CC field to get notified when the customer sends something in ;)

Tested it out myself before suggesting it to the customer and easily enough — it worked.

Combine this with a polite email asking customers to use the shortcut to easily report issues in future (and hopefully the customer and your team will thank you later if any part of this process) which makes life a little bit easier.

Try this mailto link if you want to email me feedback about this article or anything in general. I promise to reply as soon as I can.

Who? Should do it

Depends on your organisation policy of who communicates such changes to clients. Always check with your up-lines and team members before making changes like this and asking clients to email you about issues instead of the way that’s written down as a process.

Luckily I’ve been working at organisations that aren’t resistant to change and are ready to try new things in hope of better results. If your manager might need convincing, first get buy-in from the team and show them that you’re trying to solve a real problem that costs everyone time and eventually wasted money for the organisation.

If your organisation has a process that already works and your clients are sending their issues through a web form with all the proper information you probably don’t want to be making a change like this — i.e. don’t break what already works.

When? to do it

Today. Quoting what my good friend James shared with me the other day:

Q: When is the best time to plant a tree?

A: 30 years ago!! But the second-best time is today!

The ugly and beautiful truths

ugly truth:

• This email template is really another form in disguise — you know it and the customer knows it.

the beauty of it:

• by implementing a strategy that makes the process easier for the customer, yourself and others, you’re saving time and money for both by reducing back-and-forth communication