How-To: Maximize Your Technical Support Experience

Whether you’re receiving or providing technical support, I think we can all agree the experience has its ups and downs. ZenDesk, our support ticketing platform with which so many of you are familiar, says that 82% of people have cut ties with companies due to bad customer service. Now that’s scary! Upon reflecting on my own customer service experiences, though, that statistic becomes less surprising. Honestly, I can remember more bad customer service experiences than I can good ones!

This is why we put a lot of time and effort into modifying how we do technical support here at Burlington Bytes (that, and we have a passion for helping people). Like other parts of the company, we are constantly striving toward improving our Technical Support team so our clients get the best technical support experience possible. But enough about us – let’s talk about what you, as a recipient of technical support, can do to fully maximize your experience working with us.

Here are a couple helpful tips that will leave you happy with your experience working with us, every time:

Choose your means of communication wisely

This seems like a no-brainer, but effective communication is so important that I can’t not mention it. We receive and handle support requests via phone, email, and, in the rarest cases, walk-in visits at our office. Choosing which form of communication you’d like to use can have a bigger impact on your support experience than you might imagine.

Maybe you’re too busy to write a clear and concise email stating what you’d like done on your site or perhaps you’re a slow typist and emailing is just plain frustrating for you – whatever the reason, you can always give us a call! More often than not, a quick phone call can provide our support techs with all of the necessary information in half the time it would take you to write an email – saving you time, money, and frustration.

If you’re able to more effectively explain the problem you’re having through writing, that’s great! Send us your request via email to [email protected] – but not before you’ve read the second item below!

Ultimately, choosing a means of communication that you’re comfortable with will keep you in a good mood and will increase the effectiveness of your communication with us.

What to include in your initial support request

If your choice of communication is email, make sure to give us as much information as possible about the problem you’re having. This will cut down on the back and forth of emails, decreasing the amount of time we spend handling your request, leaving you happy at the end of the month when you receive your invoice. What pieces of information are we looking for? Great question! Read on for a convenient reference you can use when you’re sending in an email request.

If something’s visually broken on the frontend of your site, you should include the following:

• Screenshots of the issue you’re seeing – find out how to take a screenshot here (Windows) or here (Mac)
• Links to the pages that are having the issue
• What web browser and operating system (OS) you’re using

If a piece of functionality is broken on your site’s frontend or backend, you should include the items listed above, as well as:

• Give us steps we can take to recreate the issue. We can’t fix it if we can’t replicate it!
• If it’s not obvious, give us an idea of how it is supposed to function

Finally, if you get an error message on your website… ever:

• Take a screenshot of the message, or copy/paste the error message into an email
• Include steps you took that gave you the error message and perhaps some context as to what you were doing or trying to do when you encountered the error (were you installing or updating a plugin? were you uploading an image? were you saving a page?)

If you have any questions, concerns, or experiences (good or bad) working with our support team that you would like to share – you can email me directly at [email protected]. I would love to keep this conversation going!

Image Credit: Performanse