Canned Responses in Helpdesks
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Does anyone use something like this? We do not, but I saw someone discussing it today and every early response was "this is a bad idea", to which I seem to agree. It sounds nice, respond in a click, but the customer knows this instantly in nearly all cases and it seems like it would carry a lot of risk - risk of getting the same one more than once, the risk of getting the wrong one, risk of the info it in not matching exactly what is needed and it makes it sound like the helpdesk probably doesn't speak the language that they are supporting, I would imagine. I'm not sure how advantageous it would be to use them, what does it really speed up, but can see many caveats.
Maybe if the canned response was a KB article type thing... like someone needs to do something and the instructions are definitely the same every time. But it would be the canned technical steps, not a "response". Something that the customer would expect to be canned and not written out.
Thoughts? Anyone using or see value to canned responses?
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Are you referring to canned responses where a help desk responder is choosing from a list, or automated responses?
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I only see 2 instances were this may be advantageous and one of those is through the machine when machine-generated replies are developed. Can't help that one. The other is, like you said, knowledgebase or FAQ articles, where the instructions are pretty much all the same. However, when it comes to the second type, I would typically try to type something as if it was me giving them a piece of paper with instructions on them saying "try this out and let me know how it turns out and we'll go from there".
Most of the time, the FAQs are aimed at helpdesk techs instead of the users, but I do have a few FAQ articles that are aimed at users.
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You'd think with autocorrect cell phones that they would use that to help users formulate their questions. You're asking about pinging but pinging and hostname together autocorrect into DNS or something
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I could theorize a situation where it would be helpful, but I've had no good experience with canned responses from anywhere. PayPal is the worst offender. They are so bad I have to wonder how many more people they have to employ because now instead of being cool, calm and collected, I'm annoyed by a canned response by the time I'm dealing with a real person.
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I setup canned responses for a local pool service on OSticket. Their customers loving getting an email notification everytime their pool is serviced.
There isn't too many variants when doing pool cleaning. I believe we made about 10 different responses.
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I use them but I am not a MSP. I use them here at my work for common requests, such as a document in our document management did not get checked in. I mean there are only so many ways to say: "I have made the document(s) available. If you receive an error that they are "already selected for editing" log out and then back in. They will be available then." These are for the common things that most employees know what is going on. Also if a secretary requests that we add an attorney to their dictation tray, I use a response then. Also if they request one of our conference lines, I have an auto response set up with the information they will need once I reserve it for them at the time they requested. I use them a lot for notes on what I did to someone's computer. i.e. I have a private note for when I delete someone's computer profile, outlook profile, etc. easy way for me to document. For example "Deleted computer profile due to the issues they were having. Issues where as follows: " and then I just type what issues they were having. Again I have a real good relationship with my users so I don't think it is as big of issue for me. I can tailor my responses to my environment. I wouldn't use them at a MSP where I am dealing with different clients.
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@aidan_walsh said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
Are you referring to canned responses where a help desk responder is choosing from a list, or automated responses?
Ah, good point. Choosing from a list was the idea.
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@scottalanmiller said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
@aidan_walsh said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
Are you referring to canned responses where a help desk responder is choosing from a list, or automated responses?
Ah, good point. Choosing from a list was the idea.
Yeah, having a human in the loop makes all the difference. I was adding "Automated" to "Canned Responses in Helpdesks" in my head, silly me.
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@IRJ said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
I setup canned responses for a local pool service on OSticket. Their customers loving getting an email notification everytime their pool is serviced.
There isn't too many variants when doing pool cleaning. I believe we made about 10 different responses.
Is this a response or more of a "notification?"
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@scottalanmiller said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
@IRJ said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
I setup canned responses for a local pool service on OSticket. Their customers loving getting an email notification everytime their pool is serviced.
There isn't too many variants when doing pool cleaning. I believe we made about 10 different responses.
Is this a response or more of a "notification?"
More of a notification, but the canned response piece of the helpdesk is used.
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The owner creates all the tickets for service each day in the morning. The pool employees use an app on their smartphones.The pool service employee chooses the response from the list based on the work performed and updates the ticket on site. The customer instantly gets a notification.
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@IRJ said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
The owner creates all the tickets for service each day in the morning. The pool employees use an app on their smartphones.The pool service employee chooses the response from the list based on the work performed and updates the ticket on site. The customer instantly gets a notification.
Do you mean pool like swimming?
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@scottalanmiller said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
@IRJ said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
The owner creates all the tickets for service each day in the morning. The pool employees use an app on their smartphones.The pool service employee chooses the response from the list based on the work performed and updates the ticket on site. The customer instantly gets a notification.
Do you mean pool like swimming?
yes
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No pool support, not a support pool.
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@scottalanmiller said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
No pool support, not a support pool.
lol. OSticket does integrate quite well with service oriented businesses though.
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We use them just to acknowledge we received their ticket and inform them of next steps etc.
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So generic responses like
"Your ticket has been received and is being looked into" I see as perfectly fine.
Responses where a client emails in and asked for information regarding an ongoing project or for assistance, and then the assistance is a boiler-plate email template like the above. Is a big no no.
There has to be a human touch of:
"Hi Dan, please see the below steps on how to complete that process"
- boiler-plate text to resolve issue.
Otherwise it's just impersonal and makes the customer wonder if what you offer is actually valuable.
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Our "Canned" responses all require modification before we send them along, so they're not really "canned" but used more as a template. I like this idea. I don't care for the typical one or two line canned response type stuff.
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@dafyre said in Canned Responses in Helpdesks:
Our "Canned" responses all require modification before we send them along, so they're not really "canned" but used more as a template. I like this idea. I don't care for the typical one or two line canned response type stuff.
More like shrink wrapped
