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How to use Zendesk
A Zendesk ticket is created when a user:
- submits our support form
- requests a change, such as a branding or go-live request
We have a single Zendesk view of these tickets: "Notify Support".
Tickets should be triaged shortly after they come in, and at least within 30 minutes so that we know we have a view over any urgent enquiries. Triage should be done by whoever sees the ticket first - either the technical or non-technical support person. Triage essentially consists of two things:
- deciding whether the ticket needs to be handled by a developer
- deciding whether the ticket requires an urgent response
If a ticket needs to be handled by a developer, set 'Notify responder' to 'Technical'; otherwise, set it to 'Non-technical' or 'Billing' as appropriate. If a ticket requires urgent response, get the relevant support person to start working on it as soon as practicable.
The developer on support prioritises technical issues and questions. Product and delivery managers prioritise all other queries.
We have a runbook for technical support.
Suggested order of priority for reading new and open tickets:
- ‘Reported problem’ (new tickets might be an emergency)
- ‘General Notify support’ (user might be reporting a problem and unable to sign in)
- Open ‘Reported problem’
- ‘Request to go live’
- Question/Feedback
Our team level agreements (TLAs) for responding to support tickets are:
- 30 minutes for an emergency
- end of the next working day for
- non-emergency problems
- a request to go live
- questions and feedback
These timings relate to the initial reply, not the resolution.
Our suggested TLA for resolving a ticket is 5 working days after the initial response.
This applies to everything except:
- the most complex issues
- billing tickets
If we cannot resolve the issue within 5 working days, we should send the user an update on day 5, just so they know we haven’t forgotten about them.
| Scenario | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Internal comment left, but no response sent to the user yet | New | |
| Initial response sent, but we still need to work on it | Open | |
| User response required | Pending | These will move back to Open when the user replies. If it’s something we need to follow up on, set a reminder. |
| Still under discussion or being worked on by the team | Open | |
| Solved - no further action | Solved | |
| Solved, but there’s a follow-up action for someone on the team | On Hold | Leave an internal comment on the ticket. Tag the team member who needs to follow up. |
Slack is good for discussing tickets, but our threads can easily get lost.
We should use the internal note function in Zendesk to either:
- link to the Slack thread where the team are discussing how to resolve a ticket
- leave a note about progress or next steps
Then whoever picks up support the next day can access all the latest information from the Zendesk ticket.
Since multiple people are working on the same pile of tickets, it helps if we can all do a few things to make it clear who's working on what. These are a few suggestions you can try to bear in mind:
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Provide a first response when you start on a ticket. This avoids the user submitting another ticket if we're slow to provide a full response. It also keeps the number of "new" tickets down, so we have a better sense of how much of a backlog we have.
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Only leave a tab open if you're working on a ticket. Tabs appear at the top of the page. Your profile will be shown on the left when someone views a ticket, and may stop someone else responding to a ticket if they think you're on it already.