Get Organized with a Ticket Support System

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Get Organized with a Ticket Support System

January 24th, 2008 | 10 comments

Ask Josh Spaulding

If you notice, many of the more successful online marketers use ticket systems to manage their support, advertising and inquiries in general. Just off the top of my head I know that Willie Crawford, Mike Filsaime, Jonathan Leger and many others have ticket systems set up.

I’ve been noticing them pop up for a while now, but it wasn’t until I recently spoke with Jonathan Leger that I really thought about starting one for myself.

After searching and finding paid options thinking higher quality would be provided for a monthly payment, and being disappointed, I came across Maian Support, which is absolutely Free and functions perfectly!

I’m now using it for my support desk at Ask Josh Spaulding dot com

The installation was easy (registered the domain, changed the nameservers, installed the script and was running in under 25 minutes) and there isn’t a single thing I don’t like about it.

There are three reasons I really like using Ticket Systems to handle support:

1. It eliminates all of the deliverability (if that’s a word) issues that are generally associated with email. Create a ticket and 99.9% of the time it’s going to be read and 99.9% of the time you will receive your reply.

2. It helps organize communication, which improves the quality of support you provide.

3. It adds professionalism to your support process. It shows that you’re serious about support and have a professional means of communicating that support.

You don’t have to have a product to benefit either. You can use it just to manage business email, JV proposals etc.

No matter what you use it for I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a step up from traditional email!

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10 comments

Chuck (6 comments.)
24th January, 2008 at 8:18 pm

Not to knock your idea…because I’m sure there must be some upsides to it as well. But, just shooting from the hip…I don’t like ticket systems. A ticket system is just another tool, like email or anything else. But to me, it feels like a depersonalizing thing…something that just adds another level of separation from your user base. And I think it’s frequently used that way. In fact, I had a personal experience with one of the guys who you referenced at the beginning. I don’t recall all the details anymore, as it’s been a couple years. But I had signed up for something and it wasn’t delivered. I submitted a ticket about it…but ended up getting a much faster response by telling a mutual friend who contacted them directly. While I was glad to get it resolved, it also told me that they didn’t value their ticket system as highly, and that they were using it as a way of limiting personal concact.

Bottom line for me: If you respond to email promptly, you’ll probably respond to tickets promptly. So, in that case…no harm, no foul. But if it becomes a buffer between you and your site visitors…then I don’t think it’s a good thing.
Josh Spaulding
24th January, 2008 at 8:22 pm

You know I agree with that! I strongly believe in solid support. Ticket systems or any other system for that matter is only as good as the person running it.

In this case it’s a good thing. It will allow me to respond even quicker without having to worry about lost email.

If some doesn’t reply to your ticket, they don’t have the excuse that they didn’t get it! You have that ticket number right there!

Some people do use them to separate themselves from their customers, but others, like myself, use it to get closer to their customers by providing top-notch support.
James Dyson (1 comments.)
24th January, 2008 at 9:35 pm

Josh,

I’ve been using the Maian Support system on my site for a while and I’ve always found it reliable and quite customisable too.

I searched around a fair bit when first considering my choice of system but found there wasnt much that was out there that wasn’t either a. overpriced / b. didn’t offer everything I wanted.

Maian isn’t publicised as much as it should be, it’s definately handly and I find there’s definate benefits to using a ticket system as you can really cut out unnecessary correspondence with a customer that often happens with email - along with the usual deliverability worries.
Amanda (10 comments.)
26th January, 2008 at 4:41 pm

I can definitely see how something like this would be useful. I often have one email address setup for each domain name I manage and it can be hard to keep them all straight. Pointing all your customers to one location would be much easier.

However, I don’t think a lot of people understand online ticket systems or how they work. I had no idea what they were until I got into internet marketing. I think if you work in niches outside IM there will be some level of education involved with explaining to customers how it all works.

I’ll definitely be setting one up though once I’m rich and famous like Josh.
Josh Spaulding
26th January, 2008 at 6:30 pm

@ James - I’ve received several tickets since this post and the entire process is so much easier, I love it.

@ Amanda - You have a point. It probably wouldn’t be ideal for non-IM niche sites. I don’t use it for my niche sites that are not IM related. I get very little feedback from those sites anyway.

I’m far from rich and famous
Rufina (2 comments.)
27th January, 2008 at 2:11 am

Chuck, Josh, Amanda,

Today, web owners can’t get by for long without support tickets.

If you have several websites with your email address on them or publish articles with email addresses on them, over time you will be receiving 10,000-20,000 spam emails a day into your email box, like I was. Try sorting out the legitimate emails from the spam when you have 15 -25 email accounts all getting upwards of 10,000 pieces of spam a day! Try even keeping up with deleting all that crap! Its insanity!

Ultimately, I shut down the email accounts and opened new ones connected only with the support ticket. What a lifesaver! Now, the only mail I get is real support mail and I’ve saved myself several hours per day.

So my suggestion is to set up a support ticket system as soon as you set up your site and don’t give email address out in your resource box - just send people to the support ticket page. I use one with a capsha to insure no spammers get in.

Rufina James
Chuck (6 comments.)
27th January, 2008 at 10:26 am

@ Rufina -

I can completely relate to the spam problem, but I wouldn’t agree that the support ticket solution is the only or best one.

I have had up to 50 prominent sites at once and my email address was everywhere for a time. But I couldn’t give mine up…it’s the same one I’ve had for 10 years and it’s myfirstname@myfullname.com, so I had to come up with a different solution.

First, I changed the email address on all my sites to graphics instead of text.

Then, I outsourced my domain-based email to Google Apps, which is a free solution with far-and-away the best spam filtering I’ve ever seen. I had wrestled with all kinds of spam filters and found them all unwieldy and lacking in flexibility. If you use domain-based email (as opposed to a gmail or yahoo mail account), you may want to check it out here:

http://braindump.chuckbrown.com/stuff-i-recommend/cool-email-solution-google-apps/

@ Josh,

Yeah, you may not be rich and famous yet…but you’re far closer than you were a few days ago!
Rufina (2 comments.)
28th January, 2008 at 4:35 am

Thanks, Josh. I think I’ll give it a try with additional email addresses on the same domains.

Rufina
oriental rugs
28th January, 2008 at 10:07 am

Thanks for the recommendation, Josh, will look into it.
Josh Spaulding
28th January, 2008 at 9:49 pm

No problem, Oriental. Please read my comment policy