Our new favorite question around here is, ‘can you automate it?’ When it comes to support requests, we can and we did!
Using Claris Connect, a Claris FileMaker tool, we’ve automated support requests. Each user has a ShedVerse menu option and can select “Support Ticket.” A card will pop open, prepopulated with the user’s name and contact information (fields are left open, so s/he can edit those if there is a better way to reach them at the time of submission too) and asking for a priority level and description of the issue. The user can provide as much information as necessary and click submit. Upon submission, the ShedVerse Slack Workspaces gets a ping with all of the information on that card (and a little more!).
We have separate channels in Slack for each of our clients. In this way, we know, even before reading the support ticket, which client is having the issue. Have an emergency w/ the customer in front of you? Just mark the priority as “911” – we have a separate channel for that and our entire team is ‘at the ready’ to reach out to you within moments.
I’ve included a short video showing the user creating the request and what our post looks like coming in. Check out the video, as well as the extension ideas below, and create your own variation!3 When you are done, post a reply with details about your variation…let’s keep the ideas flowing!
Coming Soon…Version 2!
Our first version allowed all users to submit support tickets straight to ShedVerse. However, we soon realized that about half of the tickets coming in were really questions meant for client management and not issues for ShedVerse to address. Therefore, version 2 will route support requests to the client designated internal support team first. If the support request can’t be resolved by the internal team, then it can then be submitted to the ShedVerse Team. This is going to be seamlessly automated and the users will never know the process has changed “under the hood,” because nothing will change with how they submit their support tickets.