AutotaskExtend Network (AXN) - AXN Blog: Maxine Driver

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	Johnny Eco
	Pete Jenkins
	Wendy Lee
	Dan Silvers
	Maxine Driver

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Tech-Tip For Streamlining Service Delivery
updated 7/9/2007

In this post I'd like to share with you a service desk "best practice" we've uncovered that could save you a lot of time trying to reproduce errors or problems reported by your customers.

It's a simple, two-part idea, but relatively few IT service providers do it. The first piece of this tip is to train your customers to submit service tickets to you IN WRITING, rather than calling them in. This assures that the information you get is exactly what the customer provided, creates a bullet-proof trail of the event, and saves you a lot of time key-stroking information from telephone calls..

Autotask gives you several options to provide your customers to make this easy. The best bet is the Client Access Portal, which you can brand with your own company's logo and information. This not only provides the ticket entry form for your customers to complete, it also allows them to check back on the status of the tickets they submit, without having to call into your company. You can even use our AutotaskExtend™ tools to create your own ticket-entry form!

The other option is to use our "Add Ticket E-mail Service." This simple yet very powerful web service is also part of the AutotaskExtend™ Integration Platform, and allows you to accept standard e-mails from your clients and automatically convert them into service tickets.

However you do it, the second piece of this best practice is to encourage your customers to create a screen shot, or capture the error log, when they encounter problem and then have them attach this important piece of information to the service request tickets they submit.

These attachments will flow into to Autotask and automatically get attached to the tickets, giving your techs another clue to the problem and resolution even before they begin to work on the issue.

Often times this can significantly reduce the time you spend trying to reproduce the error/problem yourself, and allows you to more quickly address the problem at hand.

Got a good "best practice" you'd like to share? Pass it along to the community by posting it here.

For more details and documentation, click here. And, if you need some extra help in using the tools included in AutotaskExtend, our Professional Services team is available on a fee basis to help you create your custom extensions..

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