Improve Support Response Flow With Mandatory Smart Checklist Items

Team: First-line support engineer, QA engineer, Software engineer

Problem

Swiftly resolving complex support cases requires seamless team collaboration. Missing crucial information when escalating a ticket can add hours – if not days – to the support process.

OK, imagine a standard support case. You receive a request from the customer with barebones information. Then, you try to understand what the dev team needs to offer a solution. Information is gathered chaotically, and the answer is pending, all while a new notification pops up: any updates?

Alina Kachan

Customer Support Lead at Mailtrap

Main challenges

• Clients rarely share all the necessary details in their original request
• Cross-team communication gaps due to the lack of a predefined workflow
• Your teams might be located in different time zones, making the back-and-forth more time-consuming

Solution

Codify your support flow with a list of mandatory ToDo checklist items needed to process a support request successfully. 

Documentation: Jira Cloud/Data Center

The support team in collaboration with engineering has defined the list of items they should check with the customers before escalating tickets to engineers. The mandatory items include: customer subscription type, installed app version, the environment details, console logs, and the date when the issue was first observed. Optionally the support person asks for the browser version and whether the issue can be reproduced with historical data.

The checklist is added automatically each time a customer reports a bug (issue type = bug). 

Tickets can’t be moved into development until all mandatory items are completed. When attempting to move it without mandatory items completed, the transition will be blocked and the error message will pop-up.

In the same manner, the engineering team has their own checklist with pre-defined mandatory items. Once the ticket is transitioned to “in review by engineers” status, a new checklist is appended. The mandatory items include reproducing the issue, confirming the root cause and linking to internal issue ID and optional items include escalating to management and providing ETA.

• Everyone’s guide: Checklists work exceptionally well when illustrating steps people need to follow. 
• Predictability: Your teams know how to proceed every step of the workflow instead of making decisions on the fly.
• Improved time on resolving support cases: An ironed-out process ensures support tickets are closed faster.
• Fewer irritations for your team: The support team can check the status of the case instead of ping their teammates all the time.
• Process automation: Necessary checklists can be added and appended on every workflow transition.
• Peace of mind: Your support team can provide the client with a result: an update on the progress.

Add Smart Checklist to your Jira

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Bonus tip

Displaying Smart Checklist on the Service Desk Portal view will keep your customers updated on the progress in real-time

Article by Yuliia Tkachenko

Marketing Manager at TitanApps