Zendesk on Zendesk: Bump Bump Solve

88 Comments

  • ZZ Graeme Carmichael
    Community Moderator

    Matt

    That is an excellent article.

    Setting the correct ticket status is an area that I see agents do very poorly. For example, I see comments like, 'Here is an update, I'll get back to you tomorrow'- status pending.

    I would recommend that supervisors review pending tickets from time to time to ensure that they are truly pending so that they do not drop off the agent's radar or corrupt SLAs.

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  • Kraven

    We have something like this already in place. Another trick that helps to ensure that reps don't mistakenly set the wrong status is to have macros set the status for them.

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  • Diane Albert

    this is awesome...

     

    i have a Diane-o-mation version of this using two macros.  Basically, my first macro is "have you resolved your issue, I see you haven't responded", and then a "couple days" later as i'm reviewing my pending YET AGAIN, i have a second macro for "i see you haven't responded, so we're closing this ticket, but if you need help, simply respond and we'll continue our conversation"...or something like that.

    I've been meaning to make this into an automated process but didn't have the brain power assembled until my summer down-time season.

    (Diane wants MORE MORE MORE of these kinds of things!!!)

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  • Nora Moore

    Graeme, Kraven, and Diane,

    Thanks for your input and recommendations! 

    Matthew should be online soon to respond to comments as well. :)

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  • Matt Marcucci
    Zendesk Employee

    @Graeme, agree! We run Insights reports on Pending tickets to make sure they don't blow out, but the majority are taken care of by the bump solve process.

    @Kraven, this helps also push the ticket to work with this kind of process rather than relying on an agent to do it manually.

    @Diane, some of our advocates had this setup as well, we thought it would be great to just have everyone do it, then automate it :)

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  • Andrea Saez

    Great stuff! We also do a bump-bump-solve here :)

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  • BNI Connect Support

    Has this negatively impacted your SATISFACTION rate any?  When the client is offered the opportunity to rate the service are you getting any negative ratings due to the automated solve or is the satisfaction offering suppressed?

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  • Kraven

    @Jeremy, as an e-commerce site with a relatively high volume of customer contacts through ZD, we've found that this process has not negatively impacted our NPS scores since we implemented this over a year ago. Wording is key of course.

    The timeline we utilize is as follows. An automation sends a reminder after 48 hours for Pending tickets, and Solves at 72 hours. Solved tickets send an automated survey (with a SurveyMonkey link) at 5 days, and Closes the ticket at 7 days after Solve.

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  • Nicholas McMurray

    We use a similar setup where we bump the customer 2x and then solve the ticket, all with automations.  Works out great.  To Jeremy's question, every now and again we get back a negative rating.  It's rare though and is just as common as it was with a manual process.

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  • BNI Connect Support

    Thanks @Kraven @Nicholas - now I just need to teach my agents not to use it as a burial ground for unwanted tickets that they are avoiding responding to  

    :- )

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  • Suzana Bueno

    Jeremy, this has impacted our satisfaction a bit, yes. We solved it by setting two different automations for Satisfaction requests.

    For regular solves, we send the regular stuff. "Hey, did you like it? We'd love to know!" or something.

    For bump solves, we send something around "Hi! Your ticket was automatically set to solved because we didn't hear from you. Not satisfied? Please reply to this email and we'll keep talking until you're happy!"

    Of course there are always those unhappy people who just tap "I hate you" and forget to read it, but this has reduced the practice almost completely. I feel that most people don't know exactly what to do and feel left out so that's why we came up with this.

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  • Joe

    We're a little new to zendesk so this is exactly the type of thing we're excited about.

    The one thing I'm not sure works so well is the lack of "Ticket: Comment" as an action in the automation or otherwise. I would much prefer to comment within the actual ticket rather than sending a new email, which would result in a new ticket if the customer replies. I think most of our customers would simply reply to the email rather than clicking on the ticket link, even if we asked them to.

    We'd then need to make sure we're looking out for this and merge the tickets, which seems like a hassle. Would this be the case, or am I understanding the process wrong?

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  • Matt Marcucci
    Zendesk Employee

    @Joe, for the automation, you can use the Notifications: Email user option, and it will automatically select "requester" in the adjacent field that will appear. 

    This would count as an update to the existing ticket, so that if the end user replies, it will just add on the reply to the existing ticket as well.

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  • Jonathan Jongkind

    I love this implementation, so thank you for sharing this with us, Matt.

    I am very interested to know how you handle out-of-office responses with these automations. I know they end up in 'Suspended Tickets', but if you are aware a customer is out of the office for longer than the automation kicks in, how do you deal with this - do you add the tag to prevent the automation from taking place and remove it when they are back?

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  • Suzana Bueno

    @Joe If they reply to that email it will update the same ticket so don't worry about it! The same happens for Satisfaction rating request emails.

    @Jonathan I don't think Zendesk has any kind of auto-processing for suspended tickets, but nevertheless the customer can always reply back and reopen the ticket when s/he gets back. 

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  • Kath

    I don't have the ticket status Hours Since Pending or Hours Since Update. Do I need to update or is this my plan?

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  • Pierre Merrien

    To all,

    Great stuff!

    I set my Triggers and Automations (similar process to the above) about 10 months ago due to the large amount of pending tickets we had at level 1 Support. Since introduced, it's certainly speeded things up. Works 100%.

    *My only addition was some extra views for level 1 support.

     

    Example: When the agent applies a macro (e.g 'B') the ticket goes into the holding pen (A) until 72hrs comes around... (escalates to 'C') and so on. The final macro (D) notifies the end-user that the ticket will considered closed within 24 hours. This is done automatically.

     

    (A) All CSC Pending tickets                               21

    (B) Pending tickets - Over 2 days (48hrs)       7

    (C) Pending tickets - Over 3 days (72hrs)      10

    (D) Pending tickets - Over 5 days (120hrs)      4

     

    To manage pending tickets, our agents only refer to views B, C, and D.

    Hope this helps?

     

    Pierre

     

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  • Andrew Parks

    I have been trying to do something like this for quite some time. I followed all the steps listed above yet after the specified amount of hours the tags get removed but an email message is not sent to the client. Any suggestions?

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  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Andrew! 

    The notification should be going out as part of the automation that adds the tags...can you tell me the names of your automations so I can hop into your account and take a peek?

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  • Chris Morrison

    Notifications seem to be going out based on the automations I mirrored from this article. Analysts have mentioned that they have gotten responses from customers referencing a "bump bump" email but there is no copy of the email logged in the ticket? Is there a step that maybe I missed that would add this to the ticket notes?

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  • Suzana Bueno

    @Chris yes, there is a copy! You can click on "View all events" to track all triggers and automations that worked on a ticket, and from there you can see all notifications the users received. You can find the email under the automation that popped it.

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  • Matthew Searle

    I'm just about to implement this on our account, but we have a few custom fields that we require to be filled in before a ticket can be solved but not before pending. Would the automation still set the tickets to solved without those fields?

    If not, any suggestions for the best way to handle this?

    I'm thinking that if the fields weren't filled out it could reopen but keep the bbs etc tags so that the agent can make the selection from the fields and then solve the ticket without interrupting the flow too much.

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  • Colin Piper

    Matthew, the answer is yes, setting a field with business rules will ignore dependencies except for permissions. So the ticket will be marked as solved. 

    What I do is to run another rule ahead of this one that will invalidate the conditions of the solving rule if my dependencies are not met. For example i have an automation that sets the ticket as solved after being pending for x days. I have two variations of this automation, one that tests for a field being blank and the other does not have this test. In the first I do not set the status to solved but instead send an email to the agent. 

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  • Jonathan Jongkind

    We have additional automations set up (such as if ticket has been going on for X days, notify manager) that are interfering with the 'Bump Bump Solve' automation as Zendesk seems to classify other automations as an update to the ticket.

    What would be a suitable workaround? Am I right in thinking that "Ticket: Hours since update" includes automations?

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  • ZZ Graeme Carmichael
    Community Moderator

    Jonathan J

    You also have under the ALL Conditions, 'hours since requester update' and 'hours since assignee update'. You may be able to use these as conditions to identify how long before a human has touched a ticket.

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  • Jonathan Jongkind

    @Graeme, a good suggestion, thanks! The only problem I would face then is that if I want to identify how long before a human has touched a ticket using this method, it would have to be under the 'Meet any of the conditions' (so that it is either the assignee OR requester instead of meeting both conditions) where you cannot select this condition unfortunately.

     

    I think for this to work with the current controls Zendesk offers, I would have to prevent any automations from running in between a ticket being on pending and the Bump 1/2 automations.

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  • ZZ Graeme Carmichael
    Community Moderator

    Jonathan J

    This is tricky.

    If we assume that agents and customers are both humans, then to identify tickets that have not been touched by either, both conditions need to be in the ALL section.

    For example, if an agent has not touched the ticket for 11 hours and the requester not touched it for 1 hour, then the condition in the ALL section would be:

    • Hours since requester update > 10 (comes out false)
    • Hours since assignee update > 10  (comes out true)

    So this evaluates to FALSE as a customer has touched the ticket. Only when both have not touched the ticket for 11 hours does it become true. The conditions are effectively asking if the ticket is untouched by a human. Consequently, the customer asking for an update every hour will stop this automation from firing.

    If your main concern is agents not touching the ticket for 10 hours, then drop the requester condition.

    If you really want an OR condition, then use 2 automations. One to test for the requester update and one for the assignee update. If you test for  requester update first, include a tag to stop the assignee automation from firing too.

     

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  • Ken Shampo

    First off I want to say I love this.  I noticed this when submitting Zendesk Tickets, and it instantly went on my todo list.  We spend way too much time tracking down customers so this was a great addition for us.

    I see this was partially talked about, but from a different standpoint.  Is there a way to get the bump bump solve notifications to appear as comments on the ticket. My agents at first were not sure if it was working correctly as they were not able to visibly see the emails had gone out.  For now I have them click on "show all events", but it would be ideal if the email could translate into some sort of comment whether it be public or private, just to let them know it has triggered without taking the extra steps.

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  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Ken!

    There isn't a way to add a comment to a ticket using a trigger, but there are a couple other options you could use to make that information more easily visible.

    The first option is to direct your agents to look for the tags that are set each time the BBS triggers fire; when I was a Tier 1 Advocate, this was my prefered way to identify BBS tickets.

    The other option would be to include some custom fields (such as checkbox fields) that would be populated for each BBS notification that's sent. Those fields would appear in the sidebar of the ticket with your other fields, and your agents could tell at a glance which (if any) BBS notifications have been sent. This might be useful if your tickets tend to have lots of tags on them.

    Please let me know if you have any other questions!

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  • Documentation Team

    This solution works nicely, except if we have 1 step between two bumps. We want to reopen a ticket for an agent to call, then continue with the process. This isn't working well with the trigger that removes tags associated with this setup. Any experience with this? We can have agents managing tags manually at the end, but we would like to automatize.

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