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Stopping the reopening tickets by a ' Thank you ' response.



Posted Mar 14, 2014

Hello,

What I mean by this is what we all experience. A customer creates a ticket and you solve the ticket like a boss and put the status on ' Solved '. 

Now the customer will see that you made a reply in her/his email. With the correct answer.
Ow Goodie! This worked I shall thank the agent who helped me!

The customer will now reply to the email ' Why thank you for your help it worked! '

This is all awesome and epic but on the backside of the the issue will be reopened and it's more work for the agent to close it again.
Yes you can make a trigger function which would allow any ticket that has the words ' Thank you ' in it to be solved but this isn't a viable option.

' Thank you for your help but I still need more help with this issue '

Ticket has been automatically solved and none would ever notice the poor customer that lacks help.
The ultimate way to solve this, is where the customer actually goes to the helpcenter and tags on ' Problem is solved ' and makes a reply. But we all know that this will not happen since many customers will reply on an email, which works way quicker.

So here is my suggestion for a feature request.

I'm not sure what can be done to avoid this situation so I was kind of hoping for idea's of you guys!
If something can be done or created that avoid this issue. It would make the agent-life a lot easier and flexible.

Some kind of detecting way for a ticket to see if another question has been asked including ' thank you '
Then again not all customers write a ' question-mark ? ' at the end since it all has to go fast fast fast!

PS: Pretty sure I'm not the only once experiencing this issue! ;D

This issue occurs a lot and with a lot I mean 60-70% of the time.

Kind regards
Kristof


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72

72 comments

+1 this issue needs to be addressed by the zendesk team. It's crazy that 90% of tickets get re-opened because of a thank-you message. 

8


This sure is an issue. Many many tickets stay alive and couse extra work because of this. Please tackle this.

0


I see this a lot. I have created a macro for my agents that allows them to fully close the ticket when they see this but of course the re-solve count has increased as a result which mucks up statistics. I have toyed with the idea of adding a large button (or hyperlink) in the solved email we send out allowing the customer to click that which would take them to a webpage on our site instead. We would then use the api to insert their comments as an internal comment on the ticket and force the ticket closed. 

I am just not sure that customers would take the hint :(

1


@Charley Yup and it happens more often every day! ;P

@Theo tackling this won't be easy ;P

@Colin I see what you mean, that button or hyperlink would be nice but what if for example in our case we ( the support team ) mostly put the ticket on the status solved + providing feedback to the customer .

Example: You can find that here and check this box ' ON ' 
Status --> Solved 

Then the customer gets an email.

I guess we could still work with a hyperlink in the email; but only if the status = solved.
Hmm might look into it later myself if I find some time ^_^
Anyways if you find something to tell us! ;-D

Kind regards
Kristof

0


@Kristof, there really is no easy solution to this as you mentioned, the best you can do is to put the power in to the hands of the customer. You could add text such as this to your solved emails:

 

"If you do not agree that this matter is resolved, please simply just reply to this email with your comments. Alternatively I would be grateful for your views on the support I was able to provide you, please click here to provide any feedback."

 

Still not ideal.

1


@Colin, true indeed. I believe there is no solution to this at all or ever possible. Since here and there will always be a leak. 

The text won't matter to us, they would still reply. We even go to our customers since we are a closed zendesk we send one of our colleges to explain how it works. He mentions it every time but our customers just want to be polite ^^.

Also in the mail there is no difference between Pending / Solved.
Although I'm thinking of your previous comment. To put some kind of picture with the status Pending your reply / This issue is solved.

I was thinking if the comment is smaller then ' Thank you ' it wouldn't update the ticket but that won't work since Email replies mostly include details of information of the customer , address, phone , company , ... 

But I really like your idea of the hyperlink it made me start thinking!
Crazy idea not sure if possible and possible solution.

Since we do not use the satisfaction rating things. This still gave me an idea combined with your hyperlink.
Would it be possible to provide 2 buttons in the email once a ticket is solved.
Button 1:  ' Thank you this worked fine '  ( We would then use the api to insert their comments as an internal comment on the ticket and force the ticket closed.  // Your comment above )
Button 2: ' This didn't solve my issue ' ( This would open a popup in the mail client replying to the email/ticket )

Pretty sure button 2 is not doable ;P I was just thinking ' out loud ' 
Perhaps it's not needed to provide button 2. We can just say with button 1 and if the issue didn't get solved, they can just normally reply.

We need that button ;O

Kind regards
Kristof

-1


If you have a closed helpdesk then in theory you have more control (although in practice as you say, customers do not always follow the guide). You could, for example, send the email from a non-reply address which would almost force the customer to respond in a manner that suits you. Just bouncing ideas.

0


@Colin , what are the consequences of sending an email from a no-reply email address. What if the customer still thinks that he is not helped and needs more feedback.
Our customers have no issues with replying to a no-reply@company.com address though, as we experienced before ;/

I like that you are bouncing ideas.

About the button again ;P

What if we could create an illusion button. A fake one. Shiny but no benefits.
We create a button saying ' Thank you this helped ' or something.
But on the background, it won't do anything at all then there is no need for the API either.
It's absurd but it can work or can it? 

Will customers fall for it? As our customers mostly don't even understand what a browser is, I feel like we should try it. We could eventually add a hyperlink on the button if needed. 

Perhaps a drop down could come from the button when it's clicked ' We appreciate your feedback thank you'.
That way they won't think like: Did it work? Better click it 10 more times ;P
Spam is also avoided by this.

Just thinking ' out loud ' again ^_^

Kind regards
Kristof

0


I think the best way to handle this is to prevent end-users from automatically updating tickets with a Solved or Closed status.  If an end-user sends an email response for one of these tickets, it should be placed in a holding area.  Then agents can review these comments and decide whether to: 1. Update the ticket (Thanks for your help, but it didn't work...); 2. Delete comment (Thank you! Everything is perfect!); or 3. Create new ticket (Thank you for fixing that problem.  Can you help with this problem now?)

I'm all for automating as much as possible.  But I think the best solution for this is to semi-automate it.

Any thoughts???

2


@Tim well I'm all for automating aswell but when an agent has to review it, it's not automating ;P

Tbh, I haven't looked into the button template yet due to being busy/holiday.
Your 2e mark will not work due to not being able to delete comments yet xD

But I do see where you are going. It's not something easy to deal with.

Kind regards
Kristof

0


Hey guys. Wanted to jump in with a simple question. Implementing something that tries to automate this can, and likely will, cause false positives. Zendesk may end up re-solving a ticket based on a response when it should not have.

How do you see yourself dealing with the situation when that happens?

0


@Jake, bad ofcourse.
Then again if we could add some kind of satisfaction rating system into ' Solving tickets ' 
But instead of ' Good / Bad ' ---> ' Thank you / I need more help ' 

Wouldn't that be an option?

0


@Jake, I agree automation would and will create false positives. What if HTML and/or text satisfaction buttons/links could be added to a solved trigger thus directing the user to rate the ticket, rather than replying "thank you" to it?

0


@Sean, that would be good too, but we would want to rename the buttons then :P

0


Hi Sean,

You can actually accomplish this (adding satisfaction links to the solved trigger) today.  Basically, you would disable the customer satisfaction survey automation, and instead include the satisfaction placeholder in the "Solved" trigger notification.  The placeholder is just {{satisfaction.rating_section}} and is available as long as you have the CSAT feature enabled.

I posted a tip on customizing your satisfaction survey awhile back in case you'd like more information.  Spoiler:  nope, you still can't rename the buttons... :)

Best,
Erin

0


I used to hate the "thank you"..."no thank you"...."oh no thank you" stuff...

then I decided to use it to my advantage....my response to anyone who replies with the simple Thank you stuff..

"No problem ...that's why we're here.  We love to hear from you!"

and that pretty much shuts down the conversation...but let's them know it's still a human on the other end of the computer.

I'm ready to create the macro for that one  :)

my satisfaction scores have jumped   "you're folks are sooo friendly"..."everyone is so helpful and polite"..."you use a ticketing system?  I thought I was emailing with real people"   (love THAT one!!!)

 

Diane

1


@Diane yea I we reply in the same way :)
Though I guess it messes up some of the reports etc 
We don't really use the satisfaction ratings because we have a closed zendesk but good tip towards others that do use it! ( As always ^^ )

Kind regards
Kristof

0


image avatar

Dan Cooper

Community Moderator

We tried rolling out a solution to check for the words thank and thanks that would auto-close the ticket.  It works, but our first hit was a false positive.  I was hoping that I could use regular expression to limit the filter, but it doesn't appear to be supported in the Comment text... option of the trigger.  

Ideally, if I could tell it to auto-close thank you emails that had less than ~15 characters, I think it would be perfect for us.  The issue we have is that someone will write a paragraph and say thank you at the end and there is no distinction when it is just looking for a keyword.  

1


The big issue here for us is when measuring our SLAs.  A Sev 2 ticket is solved within the expected 8 hours, but then 12 hours later the customer replies to the email and says Thanks.  Now the final ticket solution is happening after the SLA.  Am I missing some easy way around this?

If not, might it make sense to just make configurable what happens when a customer replies to a Solved ticket?  For instance, I'd be happy just having those go to Suspended.  Other people might worry about missing real issues, but I think this would still be preferable, and different companies could configure it however they wanted.

0


Luke, you ask if there is an easy way of doing this and I believe the answer is no. There is not an easy way. However let us speculate a little and perhaps this may inspire.

The Insights dataset tracks changes to tickets so therefore you could set a field  to indicate that a thank you type response has been received. 

This change in this field could be used to produce a timestamp and you can then look for any solve event that precedes that time. Subtract the create time from the time of the resulting solve event and you have a time....in calendar hours anyhow.

I am not sure that I could pull the MAQL together for this but it sounds theoretically possible and perhaps someone more talented to build the formula. However I am fairly sure you will say you want business hours and that may be a request too far. 

 

0


Here is some logic to help:

If ticket = resolved

If client's next reply is "thank you" (ignore any sent from iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, Android forced signature)

Set status to resolved, again.

1


Hey Michael,

If it only were so easy :-) but that won't work :P 

We've thought of that aswell but customers tend to ask multiple questions in a ticket stating or replying with:

Thank you BUT .... ( more text here if the issue isn't resolved )

And it's not a 100% sure that they will say thank you, some customers talk with a ' slang-language ' like thx! Merci. Thanx , ty!  etc etc ...

A friend of mine and myself are currently experimenting a ' magic trick '.

Magic is based on trickery and illusions, we implemented 2 buttons in our email platform.

One that states; Thank you, this issue is solved. ( With a redirect to the helpcenter and their ticket ) so they'll see that the ticket is resolved. = WIN 

The other button: 'Need more help' also redirects to the same page, in the helpcenter. So they can comment if they wanted ( they see the issue is solved but if it's not, they can just comment.

The trick is that they'll think that they already send a ' thank you ' so they won't reply again. ( Because they will get redirected to the helpcenter they'll see that it's Solved. They MIGHT do it 1x more time but as they comment in the helpcenter itselve, they will see it reopens and then some panic, they even called and stated ' I reopened that by accident, saying thanks ' so that's why we knew it started working.

My friend said: It might be working great OR our customers are becoming less friendly :-)

But yea still experimenting a bit with it :P

It's sort of the same as the satisfaction rating except it's not the official satisfaction rating as zendesk uses.( It's a fake/dummy! ) As we are just a small company with a closed zendesk. 

Kind regards

Kristof

0


Thus the check.  Probably need API interaction somewhere.

--

IF ticket =  solved by an agent

IF next ticket reply = from requestor, comment = "ty" OR "thanks" OR "thank you" OR "n1 dogg" (or whatever strings you have in your excessively polite customer dictionary)

Then set back to solved.

It's risky.  It may help or torpedo your SLAs.  

--

 

Your method works but the majority of our people just reply to the emails and don't touch the web interface. 

 

--

Another less risky thing could be a single button somewhere in the agent interface (after the ticket is solved the first time) or in the "re-opened notification" email that is sent to the agent that is a one click close for "Post-solved thank you".  For people in SLA land, Zendesk would subtract the time from solved to the agent closing it again.

 

 

Go figure support is the one area where we don't really want to be thanked!

1


My idea:

When I Solve a ticket with a comment, the email that's sent to the customer should clearly state the ticket is closed and any reply would be added to the ticket history but not reopen it. If they want to reopen the ticket they need to click a button/link.

"This ticket is considered resolved. If you need additional assistance or feel this ticket was closed prematurely, please _reopen it_."

A simple reply to the email will not reopen the ticket. It could potentially put the ticket into a queue of some kind but not reopen it by default.

1


This assumes, Chris, that your clients will read.  Maybe I'm bitter but I think that may possibly be ignored. If it's in big letters you'll get a reply asking why the letters are so big in the email. :)

0


That's why I suggested putting the emails into a separate queue. The point is to not re-open solved tickets unless they need to be reopened. The dedicated queue would be checked just like any other queue.

1


Perhaps I'm missing something here but it would seem to me that the problem has nothing to do with what the customer is saying in their 'Thank You' response.  Rather the issue is that Zendesk allows an email into the system to change the status of the ticket.

Why not simply change the logic so that:

IF Ticket = "Closed" 

Subsequent emails ARE written to the ticket BUT status is not changed.  The email will still be in the ticket, it will still get sent to the agent and any persons CC'd on the ticket but a simple email sent to a closed ticket cannot change the status of that ticket.  If the user has said Thank You, but I need more assistance, then the agent assigned to that closed ticket is the only one who can open it back up.

That should not be hard to do at all.

2


Issue statusses are needed to be changed by email, for example if a ticket had the status ' pending ' it needs to be changed to ' open ' later o if the requester game more feedback to the agent.

The issue is that you cannot reopen closed tickets. Perhaps with solved indeed. Just how will you create an overview of solved tickets or not?

If you get a 1000 tickets per day and solve a 1000 each day, you won't be happy to check all solved issues with latest comment by requester.

Kind regards
Kristof

 

0


How would something like the following work:

1) Customer replies to issue marked as "Resolved", status is _not_changed (issue is still resolved)

2) Agent notices that it isn't a simple "thank you" but instead a request for more help

3) Agent replies to issue which is now re-opened

In other words, only agents' replies trigger solved issues to be reopened.

1


It would not work for us. Our agent views are filtered to excluded all solved tickets therefore we rely on the ticket status changing when customers reply.

1


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