When you call with a problem, shouldn't a ticket be opened?

[hb_cmcl]

I'm a reseller and earlier today one of our clients let us know that they were seeing a MySQL error on their site. I checked their site and several others (mostly ecommerce) and all of our sites that are backed by a database were showing a "Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket" error. I called phone support and spoke to Lindsay, who asked for an example of a site that was having trouble, and then asked for my WHM password.

After I sat on hold for a long time, she eventually came back on to say that two admins were looking into the problem and hoped to have it fixed soon. I asked if there was any kind of timeframe and she said she couldn't give me any ETA. I asked if she thought it would at least get fixed sometime today and her response was, "Hopefully." I asked if there was a ticket number or reference number in case I have to call back if the problem still isn't fixed, and she said, "Unfortunately there's no ticket for this, but if you call back just tell them you were having MySQL issues earlier."

I understand that she probably really didn't have any further information to give me and wasn't at a level of tech support where she could figure it out (she sounded like she was new and very unsure of herself), but shouldn't she have opened a ticket for me to refer back to in case this doesn't get resolved soon? I've got several clients with shopping carts that are unusable and they're starting to call wanting to know what the problem is. Currently the sites seem to be "off and on" with the MySQL issues and I don't know what the status is.

(Yes, I know I could just as easily open a support ticket myself, but should I have to do that, after sitting on the phone for half an hour and explaining it already?)

[GatorDHanna]

Thanks for your post. Just as an FYI, I moved this thread to the suggestions forum because it feels like more of a suggestion than a review.

Anyways, this is something I've thought about before and am going to write a bit about because it's worth explaining in detail.

To give you some background: We occasionally run into problems where customers will say that they discussed a particular issue on the phone, got it resolved, and then the problem re-occurs and they have to start from scratch. We also get every variation of that same problem you can imagine simply because we do a lot of calls, a lot of emails, and a lot of live chats. This type of complaint isn't especially common, but it definitely does happen.

Here are the upsides to doing what you suggest: Submitting a ticket for the customer to keep a record of each call would be nice because it'd give us a unified contact history, a more accountable customer structure system (we currently track who customers talk to, but not necessarily what they do), and of course something that our customers and other employees could refer to when calling back or contacting us either via the same or another support. Good things all around.

Here are the downsides to opening up a ticket for each interaction: Our support contact volume is high and we're almost always busy, especially during the day. If we opened up a ticket for each phone call and live chat, that'd add an extra 2-3 minutes (at least) to each of our support interactions. Multiply that by multiple thousands of interactions a day and the time adds up.

At first glance, that extra 2-3 minutes just seems like our problem (it's a cost and companies don't like extra costs, right?), but in reality the result would be increased hold times. We hire and train people as quickly as we reasonably can, but we can only do so much. I'm not personally comfortable implementing something that would take an additional 2-3 minutes per call when we aren't consistently below 5 minute hold times at all times of all days (we usually are, but mid-days on week days is brutal).

Another downside is kind of paradoxical. Most of our interactions result in a first contact resolution, which is excellent for us, but bad for the case of ticket creation. If we're spending thousands of minutes of time per day opening tickets that will statistically be very unlikely to be reopened again, what's the benefit? From a purely numbers perspective, kind of negligible. It is making almost all customers wait longer for something that only a small percentage of customers would have even sort of benefit for.

And the final thing is that almost all issues which we cannot resolve over the phone or over live chat during that first contact are escalated via a ticket anyways. If you spend time on the phone trying to get an issue resolved and can't get it sorted out with the phone representative, our company policy requires that they submit a ticket.

With regards to that policy, the representative you spoke to technically should have opened a ticket for you. My guess is that the issue was something affecting the entire server or something our system administrators were already aware of, in which case it wouldn't really be necessary to submit a ticket to let them know about the issue.

Hopefully this explanation helps. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

[esl]

I have actually had an instance where the phone rep wasn't able to assist me, so he/she opened a trouble ticket under my account so the appropriate person could. I though that was reasonable and worked effectively.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by esl

I have actually had an instance where the phone rep wasn't able to assist me, so he/she opened a trouble ticket under my account so the appropriate person could. I though that was reasonable and worked effectively.

Me too.

Originally Posted by GatorDHanna

And the final thing is that almost all issues which we cannot resolve over the phone or over live chat during that first contact are escalated via a ticket anyways. If you spend time on the phone trying to get an issue resolved and can't get it sorted out with the phone representative, our company policy requires that they submit a ticket.

Maybe if the call/session just ended has lasted X minutes, the rep could ask if the customer wants a ticket; if it lasted Y minutes, the rep should submit one (on the theory, possibly already in use, that if a call/session exceeds whatever Y is, there are latent problems which will surface again, so at the least documenting things would help.)

[hb_cmcl]

Thanks for your response, but it really was not a suggestion -- I never said or suggested that a ticket should be opened for each and every contact, and I personally wouldn't expect there to be a ticket created for something that actually got resolved while I was on the phone with support. (If it reoccurred and I had to call back again, then maybe.)

This was meant to be a specific review of my contact with customer support. I was left on hold for a lengthy period of time and had to hang up without the problem being resolved and was essentially told to hope for the best, plus I was pretty unhappy with the "duhhhhhhh" interaction that I got, and I've come to expect better from HG.

Since you agree that in this case the person should've opened a ticket, and that in fact that is your company policy, I hope you'll address that with the employee in question, whose name I already provided.

On further reflection, maybe you thought this was a suggestion because of my post title. Sorry if that led to the confusion, I figured I had to put SOMETHING there and didn't want to say something stupid like "YOU SUXXORS" or whatever. Still, I think this should be moved back to reviews since that's what it is.

[regentronique]

Thank you hb_cmcl for clarifying the situation.

I was quite surprised by GatorDHanna decision to move this thread to "Suggestion", because i did not saw anything in the content giving any impression of something else than a "review" of the "poor quality level" and "poor follow up" of support. No suggestion at all was inside that text, only a complaint of the poor service.

I hope that your thread will be moved back to Review, where it belong. Mostly because you were kind enough to not have assigned a "negative icon" to it...

[GatorDHanna]

I apologize about the confusion. The post seemed more like a suggestion than a review. I moved the post back after I received your PM this morning.

I'll definitely talk to the employee you referenced and let her supervisor know as well, but if the issue was a server-wide issue, I can understand why she didn't submit a ticket on your behalf. Submitting a ticket for an issue our server administrators are already aware of doesn't help much because by the time that happens, we already have people working on the issue.

If there is anything else I can help you with or any other questions I can answer, please let me know.

Thanks again for your understanding.