During my time at Accelo, I’ve been asked several times what tools and workflows we use to support our customers, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we utilize the powerful Service module that makes up Accelo. Today I work in the Tier II Technical Support Team out of our Wollongong office, but Accelo is not my first support role. In my career I’ve used numerous ticketing platforms. Over the last few months I’ve reflected on the functions of these other platforms and how using Accelo makes my job easier, more fulfilling and enables a greater level of customer satisfaction. Join me as we look at some of the tools, features and workflows built into Accelo that make our day-to-day possible.
The Accelo service module is made up of Requests and Tickets. One major benefit of the Support Request Inbox is that when working as a distributed team, the Accelo Support staff doesn't have to worry about double handling the same customer request. Once I start replying to a Request my time logging begins, Accelo automatically claims the request, and this is visually displayed to everyone else working in that Request type.
The Tickets module goes one step further by reserving Tickets for more in-depth investigation and troubleshooting. This is desirable because a Support agent can assign a Ticket and work on that issue until completion. With the ability to create private or shared lists, I can easily view the Tickets I have assigned to myself as well as Tickets that are currently unassigned. This yet again ensures that as a distributed team we can avoid looking at the same Tickets.
Triggers are powerful automations that can be used in both our Requests and Tickets modules to track communication and assure accountability. For example, if a customer subscribes to Premium Support we use a trigger to let the entire Support Team know that a Premium Request or Ticket has been created and that work should start immediately, ensuring the premium support SLA can be met.
Templates are another powerful tool that allows anyone on the support team to create a shared or personal templated message, resulting in accurate and prompt notes to our clients. When you combine Triggers and Templated messages, your support and success teams can really start to work more efficiently.
If I was asked what is the one feature of Accelo I love the most, the powerful features that help me stay organised would rank right up in the top spots. Using the different levels of the Stream (Global, Company, Ticket, etc) allow me to easily obtain insight into the history of an issue. For example maybe the deployment I’m working with has a specific setup for their Retainers that was created during an Expert Services session. I have visibility to the Project that would have been completed by our Professional Services team where I can see any notes and conversations to help me understand the issue I’m working on.
Another two features that I really couldn’t function without are the User Preference to “action inbox items when any other user replies to a client” and the Gmail Integration setting to “Update emails in Gmail as Read and Archived when Activities are Actioned”. Combined, these settings mean I’m not having to manage both my Accelo and Google inbox. Email capture and sync enable me to work out of either inbox based on what task I’m working on. The former setting also adds an additional benefit in that if I’m taking some time off I don’t have to worry about returning to a Support inbox of 100’s of emails. Allowing me to feel refreshed and get straight back into the current issues our customers need support with.
We talk a lot about letting users of Accelo get back to the work they love doing. I can relate to this philosophy. I love tech support and helping our users with any issues they may run into using Accelo is the work I love to do. The features built into Accelo enable this for me. I don’t need to worry about copying and pasting email chains from one platform to another or building out a CRM or managing change to an account. Thanks to contact & company generation and email capture, I can focus on dedicating my time to helping our customers, this is the work I love and provides fulfillment to me.
The power of Accelo isn’t just in the core modules but also in the powerful integrations that can be connected to any Accelo deployment. I’ve spoken about one integration already — the Gmail integration and the importance of the features this provides, such as email, calendar, contact & task sync as well as the powerful inbox management features. I’d consider this an essential integration.
The advanced functionality and utilization of integrations in my role are possible because of our Jira integration. Regrettably, not all Tickets we deal with can be resolved by the support team. For example improvements, data restore requests, and time-sensitive matters are escalated to the Development team in the form of a Jira ticket. By using this integration, the Ticket I’m working on automatically links to Jira and our development team investigates, addresses, resolves and sets the changes live. Their comments and work logs pull directly into the Ticket I’m working on and I receive updates to quickly relay information to our customers. Just another example of the powerful Accelo system and how it allows me to get back to the work I love.
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