Team Support Blog

In our ongoing process to allow you to organize and categorize your TeamSupport tickets more efficiently, we’re excited to announce our new Ticket Queue feature.

The Ticket Queue is a simple, yet very effective tool which lets you keep track of what tickets you are actively working on.

At the top of the Ticket Detail view there is a new button labeled “En queue”.  Click this and the ticket you are looking at will be placed in your queue.

To access your ticket queue, just go to Tickets-My Tickets and click on the Ticket Queue button.  You can reorganize, add and delete tickets in your queue here.  You can also see other users’ Queues by going to Users to clicking on the Ticket Queue button.

The Ticket Queue is just a way for you to prioritize your active tickets – Think of it as a “to do” list for TeamSupport.

We hope you enjoy this new feature – I know we’re already using it extensively and are finding it very useful!

We recently caught up with Ron Petitt of New Tech Computer Systems to discuss their operation and how TeamSupport fits into the equation there.

New Tech Computer Systems (www.newtechsys.com), headquartered in Shreveport, LA, develops and maintains specialized software systems to facilitate the day-to-day business practices of retail and institutional pharmacies, as well as alternate care facilities such as nursing homes and health clinics.

The company, a subsidiary of Morris Dickson wholesale pharmaceuticals, established in 1841, operates in seven states and is actively extending its business footprint.

Read the interview here.

Even though the summer time temperature here in Texas is ridiculously hot, our crack development team hasn’t taken any time off to lounge in the pool.

Due to their hard work, I’m very excited to introduce a major new addition to TeamSupport which is available immediately: Family Tickets.

One of the largest problems with any system that tracks tickets (Help Desk, Support Desk, Issue Tracking Systems, Bug Trackers, etc.) is organizing tickets.  Many times tickets get created that are similar to other tickets (or in some cases even describe the exact same issue).  In other cases tickets are similar, but not exactly the same.  Some times you just want to make sure that it’s clear that two issues are related to each other.

The fundamental problem is one of ticket organization.  Allowing you to find, categorize, and manage related tickets is a significant issue and one which we feel our “Family Ticket” feature addresses extremely well.

So, what are “Family Tickets”?

The Family Ticket feature allows you to associate tickets in either a peer to peer relationship or a Parent/Child (sometimes called Master/Detail) relationship.

When you edit a ticket, you will now notice a new box like the one below:

You can associate the selected ticket to one or more tickets in one of two ways:

• Related:  This simply means that tickets have something in common with one another.  If you relate two or more tickets together, you will see links to those tickets whenever you open the ticket.  No action will be taken to other tickets if you change the status or add actions.  This is a great feature for making sure that everyone knows that multiple tickets have something in common, but are not necessarily similar enough to warrant a parent/child relationship.
• Parent/Child:  If you associate tickets in a Parent/Child relationship then the ticket status and actions added to the parent ticket will automatically become a part of the children tickets as well.  Parent/Child tickets are perfect for cases where you have created separate tickets for customers which describe the same problem.  Instead of having to update each one of these individually whenever there is a change, create a Parent ticket and link all of the tickets to it – Now you can add an action or change a status on the Parent ticket and have all of the tickets updated.

TeamSupport’s new Family Ticket feature is a major enhancement to how you can organize your tickets, and we hope you enjoy it!

For more information on the specifics of how to use the feature, please see our help file here.

We have many customers who sell physical hardware products and use TeamSupport to support their products, as well as companies who use TeamSupport as their internal IT management system.  These customers have been clamouring for a while for us to add an inventory tracking module to TeamSupport, and I’m excited to announce the general availability of it today!

Our Inventory Module is not designed to replace SAP or a high end inventory system – Instead, it’s a straight forward approach that lets you assign physical hardware to one of three places:  A customer, the warehouse (for hardware that has not yet shipped) or the Junkyard (hardware that is no longer being used in service).

You can now track physical assets on a per customer level, and also see the history of when that asset was shipped, if any service was done to it, etc.  The inventory module also supports returning hardware with an RMA and tracking that shipment.

The Inventory Module is only available on the Enterprise version of the software.

For more information on the Inventory Module, please see our online documentation here.

Several resellers and customers have been asking us for a reseller and referral program for some time now, and I’m excited to say that we’ve finally been able to release it.

Our program is straight forward and has options for both casual referrals and resellers who want to take a more active role in the process.

The three tiers are as follows:

• Individual Lead Referral:  Refer a customer to TeamSupport and you get $200 if we close the sale.  It’s that easy!  This plan is designed as a “Thank You” for individuals who let their networks know the power of TeamSupport.
• Corporate Silver Partner Plan:  Help us sell TeamSupport to your clients and receive 15% of the monthly recurring revenue.  We handle billing and customer management, you just help us close the sale and then start receiving checks!
• Corporate Gold Partner Plan:  This plan is designed for larger volume resellers who can handle the end user billing themselves.  When you sell TeamSupport to an end user we will invoice the partner directly at a 25% discount then the partner manages billing the customer.

Much more information, including signup and referral forms, is available here.  Of course, if you have any questions feel free to drop us a line!

Our COO, Eric Harrington, is a graduate of Phoenix University.  Their alumni magazine recently did a very nice article about Eric and TeamSupport which you can read here.

What if I told you I knew where you could find $338.5 billion (yes, with a “b”)?  I bet your ears would perk up.

I won’t keep you in suspense:  Improve your company’s customer support.

A survey released by Greenfield Online and Ovum in late 2009 entitled “The Cost of Poor Customer Service: The Economic Impact of the Customer Experience and Engagement” revealed that poor customer service cost a total of $338.5 billion per year (more details about the survey can be found here).

To put that in perspective, $338.5 billion is more than the GDP of Poland, Austria, Norway, or even Saudi Arabia!

The losses came from two areas:  63% were transactions taken to a competitor, while 37% were transactions abandoned completely.

The 63% number is interesting in that it matches very closely with the Accenture study (see “Customer Service as a Growth Engine” article) that showed 69% of customers reported switching providers due to poor customer service.

I certainly won’t promise that your company will immediately gain billions in revenue just by increasing your customer service, but my experience has certainly shown a direct correlation between excellent customer service and happy customers, and between happy customers and increased sales.

Go get your share of that $338.5 billion!

- Robert

In any organization, there are two primary groups that talk with customers:  Sales and Support.

Sales typically works with prospects and their job is to convert them into customers.  They are the best group to understand how your prospective customers view your company and product and what their perceived needs are.  Most CEOs are pretty good about working with the sales teams and interacting with prospective customers, and in fact it is common for CEOs to go on sales calls with their sales teams.

However, once the sales team has closed a sale, their focus goes to the next prospect and the relationship between the customer and the company is transferred to the Customer Support department.

In most companies the relationship that the Customer Support team has with the customer lasts much longer than the sales process did, and they get to the know the customer on a more intimate level.  Innovative companies are using this relationship to garner customer trust and increase sales (see this article about using customer service to drive growth), and they are also using customer generated feedback to improve their products.

In running several tech companies, I’ve found that the best way to get the pulse of our customers is to spend time with the customer support group.  No matter what technology we used, I have always been a user on our help desk application and have used it to keep track of the interactions that our customers were having with our support team.

A great deal of that experience has gone into the development of TeamSupport.com, and of course I use TeamSupport every day to keep up with our customer base.

In fact, customers of TeamSupport will often see me responding to a support ticket or answering a chat.  Why?  We’ve got a great customer support team, but I feel the single most important thing we have as a company is our customers, and I want to make sure I understand their problems and concerns.  I don’t want this information filtered through layers of management – I want to be right out there on the front lines and see what’s really happening.  This methodology has served me well in several companies and it continues to with TeamSupport.

In my opinion the question is not why I am active with Customer Support but why more CEOs are not.  I understand that many CEOs don’t have the deep technical knowledge to actually work tickets and that’s fine, but they should be spending time with the support team and with the tool they are using to understand what is going on.

Spending just a few hours a month with the support team will gain CEOs invaluable insights into their customer base and help to better understand the issues and problems that they are having.

Does your CEO work the help desk?  If not, why not?

- Robert

There has been a lot of talk recently about how companies are devoting more resources to customer service and support.  While much of this conversation has centered around software companies, and particularly SaaS companies, the Wall Street Journal had a great article recently (June 7th 2010, Page B6) on the importance of customer service for companies of all types.

The first paragraph sums up the article nicely:

“Executives are paying more attention to customer service in an effort to increase sales and gain market share in the economic recovery.”

I had an interesting e-mail exchange with an author recently about the changing face of Customer Support.  His contention was that Support organizations would be forced to change away from traditional “break/fix” to a more consultative role as the method of delivery of software changed from installed to SaaS.

It was a very interesting and thought provoking discussion, but I didn’t agree with him that the catalyst for this change was simply SaaS.  As I began thinking more about this, I realized that I’ve never run a company where the support organization was simply “break/fix”.  The role of Support, in my mind, has always been about maximizing the customers’ use of the software.  Yes, this encompasses the normal break/fix, but it also must be much broader.

To help illustrate the point, let’s look at a few selected definitions of the word “Support” (full list can be found here):

• to bear or hold up (a load, mass, structure, part, etc.); serve as a foundation for.
• to sustain (a person, the mind, spirits, courage, etc.) under trial or affliction
• to uphold (a person, cause, policy, etc.) by aid
• to maintain or advocate

I personally like the second part of the first definition, and have always used it as the objective for my companies’ support operations:  “Serve as a foundation for”.  Customer Support, in it’s best incarnation, is a foundation for customers.  This does not mean just break/fix.

The middle two definitions as are close to “break/fix” as the dictionary gets, but even these are much broader.

The final definition is perhaps the best:  A Customer Support organization should be the advocate for the customer.

Once the sales team has converted a prospect into a customer, generally the Customer Support team takes over that relationship.  Any issue that the customer has, from simply needing help with a problem in the software to needing new features or bug fixes, are addressed by the Support team.  The Support Team needs to have a tight integration with product development (to fix bugs) and product management (to add new features) so that they can be the advocate for the customer and ensure their success.

A good Support team is also a consultative group and not reactive.  They should be working with customers before problems occur – The relationship should be more closely aligned with the “foundation” definition as opposed to the “sustain under affliction” one.

Will the adoption of SaaS as a delivery model for software move more Support organization away from traditional break/fix to consultative?  I don’t think so.

I think good Support organizations have been trending in that direction for several years, no matter the method of software delivery.  Good companies have good Support organizations, and those Support organizations are the advocates for the customer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

- Robert