How To Reduce The Frustration Of Getting Support

So, a word about support tickets. There is a “best practice” that most people don’t do but always gets issues resolved faster.

Not from a vendor position… but when you need to put in a support ticket yourself.

When you encounter an issue, it makes sense that you want to get it solved as quickly as possible. 

You want to reduce the friction and reduce the frustration of getting your issue solved.

Now, with very large companies there will often be a 24/7 live chat feature that will filter out common issues with a chatbot and then put you through to a human agent if nothing answers. And that human will solve your issue (or bump it to the developers if it is a bug).

Solo infopreneurs like myself are not 24/7. We live in a timezone that may not be the same as the requester’s. And I get far too few tickets to justify hiring and training anyone in a different timezone to help.

So you need to be good at reporting the issue if you want it resolved quickly.

Here’s a made up example… All in my timezone and I am usually at the PC from 10am until 5pm…

00:35 hours (my timezone)
Ticket created. No product mentioned.
“Hi, I am having an issue with this product not working. Please help”

10:00 hours
My reply.
“Ok, can you tell me which product you are having an issue with and describe the issue you are having for me so I can help you”

20:00 hours
Customer reply
“Its the XXXXXX product and its the pages that are not working properly”

Next Day 10:00 hours
My reply
“OK. Thanks. So, when you say “not working properly” what exactly do you mean? Do you have a link so I can take a look?”

Ok. You get the gist. This will take at least 48 hours to get to the bottom of and resolve.

If the requester had clearly detailed the product and the issue in the first place, it could have been cleared up in the first response.

How To Reduce The Friction

Here’s the best thing you can do (and what I do with every single support ticket I put in…

Record a short video clearly showing the issue you are having. 

You can use a free screen recording tool and upload it to YouTube if you don’t have a proper solution for this. It doesn’t matter. But it makes it extremely easy for the vendor to understand exactly what is happening straight away.

If you can’t be arsed to make a video, at least some screenshots would be something. But video is the best.

It helps the vendor provide a faster and better service and it helps you by getting your issues and roadblocks removed much faster.