Tips for Submitting a Support Ticket

Usually a support request (a ticket) is about one of three things: a Question, a Problem, or a Task.

You will get the best results if you keep every ticket limited to a specific question, problem, or task. Create five tickets if you have five separate questions or problems or tasks. Each ticket can then be assigned to a different person at 501CiO, which helps us be more efficient in helping you. To help you understand the importance of creating multiple tickets, imagine having five different conversations in one email addressed to five different people with lots of replies. Now imagine having to read each conversation thread in that one email separately, after several rounds of replies. Before long you would give up. We have literally had multiple issues going on in a single ticket, which nearly always results in delays, miscommunications, incomplete resolutions, and unhappy customers. Therefore, please understand why we insist on so many tickets.

Give your ticket a name that will help you remember later what your question, problem, or task was about. You may find yourself referencing a ticket again sometime down the road.

You will speed the process if you recount the steps that led to the problem. Instead of, “My iMIS is broken!” or, “Members can’t complete online checkout for our regional conference,” tell us a little more how things got to that point and where it went terribly wrong.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Take a screenshot with an app like Snagit, which allows you to highlight or draw a circle or an arrow on the image to point out a key detail. Hint: we really love SnagIt around here. You can get an unconditional, free trial by visiting www.techsmith.com/snagit.html. And no, we don’t receive any compensation for recommending this piece of software. We just happen to like it.