How to write a great support ticket? – ShapeTech

You ran into a problem and you want to submit a support ticket? We are aware of the fact that you might be panicking after you ran into a bug, or that you feel that the problem you are facing is quite urgent, and we are ready to help!

In order to do this in the most expedite and efficient manner, it would be of great help to us if we received a detailed account of what happened to you, what preceded it, what happened afterwards. Below you can find a brief guide on how to write a great support ticket which will benefit everyone.

Task

Writing a task ticket might need the most detailed approach, depending on your task. Regardless of that, every task ticket should have the following:

Task name

Task description including, but not limited to:

what needs to be done
why it needs to be done
how do you envision the end result
defining deliverables
the urgency of the task

Optional - Wireframes, mockups, drafts, or diagrams

NOTE: Only simple tasks such as change requests or updates should be submitted in form of support tickets. All larger tasks, sets of tasks, and/or project proposals should be communicated via the usual channels (Client Managers, for example).

Problem / Incident

When submitting a ticket about a potential problem in your everyday use of software, having a clearly organized ticket helps our agents understand it more easily and start working on its solution more quickly.

Defining ticket type and priority

If this is the first time you are submitting a ticket on this issue, you can categorize it as a problem. If it's not the first ticket about the issue at hand, or you have more helpful additional comments on the existing issue, or the ticket is related to an existing problem you reported, you can categorize it as an incident.

Ticket type can be defined within the body of the ticket, or be left for the support agent to define.

In addition to the ticket type, if the ticket is deemed very important, its priority can be defined as Urgent. Only the most important tickets should be defined as Urgent, to allow for efficient prioritization by our agents and the development teams. If you do not include the priority in the ticket, the agent will assign one to it.

Suggested ticket form:

Subject line / Problem name

Ticket type: Problem

Optional - Priority: Urgent

Description of the problem at hand (with context)

Steps to reproduce (how to reproduce the problem you are describing, in an ordered list just like below)

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Expected result (description of what you expected to happen)

Optional - Actual result (description of what actually happened if not included in the description)

Optional - Additional information (Device you are experiencing problems on, operating system, browser etc.)

If you don't have the details for some of the fields, do your best to fill out the remaining fields and provide as much info as possible.

Question

As far as questions are concerned, we do not require a specific form. However, it would be greatly appreciated if you kept the question as concise and clear as possible while outlining the idea or dilemma you had in sufficient detail.

We know this isn't easy, but picture is worth a thousand words - include a screenshot (How to take a screenshot?) if you think it would help us understand it better. Make sure to provide just enough context for us, and that should be sufficient.