Ticket system or Email?

[snakeeyes121]

which system would be best to use?

a ticket tracking solution like http://www.hesk.com/ or any number of the thousands of free services avaliable or just plain old email?

Ive uploaded hesk and I like the simplicity of it, customers dont have to create an account like alot of other systems, they can just click on a link in an email when you respond to their query, the backend is simple to set up and run etc

Do you use a similar system on your website? any recommendations on similar free solutions.

I know these kind of systems are standard on the larger companies websites, but is it overkill to have one for a small business?

Heres the one I setup, its on a cart Im currently testing for somebody http://qualitylivefoods.com/support/

 

[andav]

100% use tickets! Even if you're only going to get the odd query I'd say its still worth it .Especially given how low cost/free many solutions are.

We use Zendesk and love it, heres our desk

http://bluefibre.zendesk.com/home

 

[sanjiv]

I think tickets are better for you and the customer because you just need to glance to see the previous messages. Go with tickets. You can have an email address for business enquiries.

 

[Coppock]

Personally I prefer emails... i always try to email rather than submit tickets - probably because you submit a ticket and get a "we will reply in several days" type message, whereas an email feels more immediate even if it's not!

Jen

 

[crossdaz]

Personally I prefer emails... i always try to email rather than submit tickets - probably because you submit a ticket and get a "we will reply in several days" type message, whereas an email feels more immediate even if it's not!

Jen

Totally agree - I hate those ticket systems with a passion. Email works - why fix it?

 

[SusanBryant]

We use a ticket system as it allows a query to be assigned to the correct person as soon as it comes in; and allows progressed to be tracked and ticked off, meaning that enquiries don't get 'lost in the system'.

Susan

 

[sanjiv]

I think that also if you were to have a live chat type support, tickets would work better. Emails would probably be tough to manage unless you were able to get a program which sorts into folders for each customer.

 

[webhostuk]

Hello,

Ticketing system is much better option, if you have multiple companies and wish to manage it through one admin panel you can check http://www.thevisionworld.com really nice features can be integrated with billing system as well.

 

[MartCactus]

We used to use email but its not practical for anything other than occasional queries. A web based ticket system has the following advantages for us...

1) A ticket system can control who has access to your support. Users who didn't purchase from you can't raise tickets as they don't have an account on the system, plus you can configure it to give perhaps 6 months support only after purchase if you wish. Prior to this we found we were giving support by email to people who hadn't even bought the software from us (they'd bought our software via a web developer, who'd then modified - sometimes poorly - the software 5 years ago, yet they were then coming back to us for support on those modifications, or issues caused by them).
2) a web based system means tickets are available to multiple members of staff. We can access from home, plus we have UK and Dubai offices - all can login and handle tickets.
3) since all the tickets are in a database we can keyword search when we have a tech problem too see if its been reported and resolved on a previous ticket - possible but harder to do with email, especially if they are being handled by different people.
4) we can product stats from the database - our average response time, see which customers are soaking up the most support time, see what most common issues are (this is useful as it helps us amend documentation to reduce further support calls on that issue).

We developed our own ticket system as it needed to be integrated with the rest of our site. The shopping cart software we produce now has a knowledgebase system and support ticket system built in for customers that want to use it.

As with any form of support, its important to answer questions promptly, and that the web based system makes responding easy for the customer. If you do both of those most users won't have any problems using it. Print clearly on the page how soon users can expect a response (we get some people post a ticket and then ring 5 minutes later complaining its being ignored, when we're actually still looking at the issue!).

Also a good idea to have a knowledge base system if the product your are supporting is technical - we encourage users to search that first (they don't need valid support cover to do that - anyone has access). Most issues are solved by the user themselves at that stage. Many other support tickets are answered by simply providing the URL to the correct knowledgebase article, as many users incorrectly believe their problem is unique and we won't have seen it before.

 

[owas]

depends who your customers are I think, if they are say parents buying baby clothes then an email would be much more personal and would have a better impact ona customer service bases, but if you were an IT firm then youd expect a ticket set up.
I have seen this happen first hand with a friend (a parent) and because the company only respond to tickets and not email or phone, when she could not get her issue resolved and felt she was not given the personal touch, she cancelled a big order and told loads of other parents how un pro they were.

 

[davidjgoss87]

I personally much prefer email, and customers will appreciate it as it feels more personal - like a small business should. For instance, if someone emails asking about measurements of an item, a ticket system would give them a generic "your query is in the system" type response, but it's 10 times better to email back yourself saying "Thanks for getting in touch, Steve. I'll go and measure one for you now and be back to you soon." Of course, you might have too many requests for this to be feasible, but it would be a shame. As for keeping track, I think you can probably make use of something like Highrise (highrisehq.com) where you can bcc your email to a special address and it'll get logged online where your whole team can see it.

 

[sanjiv]

I wonder if there is a ticket system that works just like email. So to respond to the ticket, the user send an email and it makes a new ticket and gets ticket responses by email and replies to the email. The ticket system picks up the emails with POP3 and sends with mail() or SMTP or whatever.

I might have a look into this for you.

EDIT: http://www.phpsupporttickets.com/ includes Email piping

 

[KM-Tiger]

I wonder if there is a ticket system that works just like email.

Loads of them.

Quite a few use Request Tracker (RT), and many of the web hosts swear by Kayako.

From the customers perspective they are just using email. From the company's perspective they deal with the email enquiries using the web-based ticket system with emails and replies all visible on one screen, which is just so much easier and better than using an email client.

 

[snakeeyes121]

I wonder if there is a ticket system that works just like email. So to respond to the ticket, the user send an email and it makes a new ticket and gets ticket responses by email and replies to the email. The ticket system picks up the emails with POP3 and sends with mail() or SMTP or whatever.

I might have a look into this for you.

EDIT: http://www.phpsupporttickets.com/ includes Email piping

Thanks Ive just downloaded that one and put it on the test site but I dont think it looks as user friendly as the hesk one.
http://qualitylivefoods.com/support2

 

[sanjiv]

It doesn't matter because people will be emailing you and not creating tickets but the emails would appear in the tickets so your staff can use it like a ticket but the customer thinks its an email. I don't know if the free one supports this but the premium version does.

I would contact them and ask them if you can trial it. If you need any help with it, just send me an email or PM.

 

[MartCactus]

I personally much prefer email, and customers will appreciate it as it feels more personal - like a small business should. For instance, if someone emails asking about measurements of an item, a ticket system would give them a generic "your query is in the system" type response, but it's 10 times better to email back yourself saying "Thanks for getting in touch, Steve. I'll go and measure one for you now and be back to you soon." Of course, you might have too many requests for this to be feasible, but it would be a shame. As for keeping track, I think you can probably make use of something like Highrise (highrisehq.com) where you can bcc your email to a special address and it'll get logged online where your whole team can see it.

Its fine for presales things like that.

It becomes more difficult when the questions are post sales support issues (especially with complex products like software). For these you need
1) the ability to screen out people not entitled to support (eg they bought elsewhere, or their support period expired)
2) sharing of information - the query you gave is a simple one - tech support queries however might have an exchange of perhaps 7 or 8 messages over a period of several days - a web based ticket system makes it easier for different people (in different offices/shifts/timezones) to pick up and run with the open ones.