I manage about 50 information systems and have some recommendations for EdTech companies and their customer support systems.
(1) Do not automatically close help tickets. Send me an email with links to close it or leave it open. If you do close the ticket automatically, I don’t need an email notification. I can find the closed ticket on the support website and can usually re-open it easily with a simple reply.
(2) Any communications should have details about the specific issue. I often have multiple help tickets open with the same vendor. I often receive emails about a status change, a new comment or a survey with no indication about WHICH ticket.
(3) Make it easy to cc others when I submit a ticket.
(4) Make sure the ticket status is accurate. I’d like to know if you are waiting for me or if I’m waiting for you. A status like “awaiting a software fix” is helpful, but make sure the status is correct. When this is incorrectly assigned as the status of a ticket, often support folks stop working on it.
(5) Although this is more of a Customer Success practice, make it easy for me to suggest new features. If my help ticket aligns with a feature request another customer requests, please direct me to the request so I can read about it and potentially upvote it.
(6) Consider hosting a user community. Users will chat about your product, and it will usually be a Google Group, and you will not heat the good, the bad, and the ugly.
(7) Manage the open tickets! It seems like a no-brainer, but closing tickets that aren’t resolved is DUMB. Letting an open ticket go for a few days with no interaction between the support rep and the customer is DUMB.
