Member Support Phase II
Two weeks ago, we announced a new email ticket tracking system designed to provide more accurate support to our members while preventing losing any support requests through the cracks. 1,046 email tickets were opened up in the last two weeks, but less than half of the load is going through the ticket tracking system (see blog post in the near future about phase III).
Today we’re locked up in a policy decision that must be made and we’d like your opinion to help us decide which way we’ll go.
The Issue: To contact us for support, members currently log in to their EzineArticles INBOX system and send us a note. When we reply, the member receives an email notice that they have an email reply from member support and to log in to read the reply. The dilemma: Why make the member log in to see the reply when we could put it in the email being sent to the member?… if only the decision were this simple.
So, please vote for option A or option B below and give us your opinion for why you voted that way:
Option A) Leave everything as it is, it’s not broke and no one is complaining about the way it is. Don’t fix what’s not broke. As a benefit to the member, because they logged in to read the reply, they are already logged in and can immediately act on the reply, whether it be fixing or updating an article, or whatever the issue is/was. If they did get the email response in the email reply rather than having to log in to view the response, they would have to log in anyway to take action, so we’ve just saved them a perceived step.
Option B) For member replies sent by our member support team, the response will be in the email sent to the member AND to their EzineArticles INBOX (you would not believe how many people bounce emails these days). The upside to this option is that the member does not have to log in to view the reply and can then decide if they want to log in to take action or come back to it at another time. The downside to option B is that we’ll be showing that we have the ability to put the message response in the email alerts and members may become confused or mad that they can’t get all of the email messages in the email alerts rather than having to log in to view them all the time.
Background reasoning for sending an email alert to check your EzineArticles INBOX rather than putting the reply or message in the email: A member can’t do more with us if they are not logged into the system and while we solved the immediacy of the message by putting it in the email instead of an alert to check their EzineArticles INBOX, we didn’t provide a mechanism for them to easily get into action without having to log in anyway. In addition, members can shut off email alerts, which means they might not even get our email reply if they shut off their alerts, leaving them even more frustrated because we didn’t encourage them to log in to review the reply.
Your thoughts?
My personal view is that the current system works perfectly well, in fact, I find it extremely efficient.
My vote therefore is Option A.
Jonathan
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