Answering your first ticket

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Access Agent

From opening a ticket to sending a reply and setting a status, with the two decisions that matter most along the way.

Answer a ticket

  1. Open a view on the left and click a ticket.
  2. Read the whole thread, not just the newest message. Customers often answer a question three messages up.
  3. Check the context panel on the right for their earlier tickets. Recurring problems need a different reply from new ones.
  4. In the composer, make sure you are on Public reply and not Internal note.
  5. Write your answer, or apply a macro and edit what it inserts.
  6. Set the assignee to yourself if it is not already.
  7. Set the status, then click Submit.

The composer with a reply being written: the channel selector at the top left, the recipient beside it, an attached file below the text, the formatting toolbar under that, and Apply macro at the bottom.

The formatting toolbar sits under the text, the attachment appears in the message itself, and Apply macro is at the bottom rather than in a menu.

The two decisions that matter

Public or internal

Which tab the composer opens on is an account setting, not your last choice, so it is the same tab ticket after ticket until a ticket with only internal notes forces the other one. That sameness is exactly why it stops being read. Before every send, look at it. An internal note sent publicly is embarrassing; a public reply left as a note means the customer waits for an answer that never arrives.

Which status

  • Open when the ball is with you.
  • Pending when you have asked the customer something and are waiting.
  • On-hold when you are waiting on a colleague or supplier.
  • Solved when the customer's problem is dealt with.

Getting this right is not bookkeeping. Automations, SLAs and reports all read the status, so a queue full of tickets left on Open because nobody changed them makes every figure wrong.

Before you send

Read it once as the customer. Does it answer what they asked, or what you assumed they asked? Does it say what happens next? Two questions, ten seconds, and they prevent most follow-up tickets.

See also

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