Help Desk Support (Zendesk) > Note to Post on Channel Partner zendesk Agents' Home Page

Tier 1 Support Ticket Handling and Escalation

Managing Energy Inc. provides a seamless integration with those channel partners providing Tier 1 support to end users, through a service called zendesk. The work flow logic behind it is quite elaborate, so it is worth reviewing it carefully to give yourself a good feel how it should work.

Each channel partner is set up with a client support Group containing one or more agents. You can get those details from your subscription manager.

Here are the work flow rules required by zendesk:

1. All end users must have an employer-domain email address (e.g., managingenergy.com ycdsb.on.ca, etc). No gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc., as they don't identify what employer the person works for.

2. All of your end users must be members of supported end user organizations. As a channel partner, you are supporting one or more organizations. zendesk will place end users in organizations based on email domain, so this will be mostly automatic. Please send us your end-user email domains as you sign up new subscribers.

3. All members of your client support group receive email notification of new tickets as they come in from end users in your supported organizations.

4. The first group member to open that email and click on a link inside becomes the assignee … the person tasked with the job of dealing with it. In many cases there is only one agent, but that number can grow, and agents would then claim tickets on an as-available basis.

5. Once a ticket is claimed (or assigned), all agents in the group receive email notice that has happened.

6. If you can’t resolve it yourselves, there is an escalation process in which MEI helps you with the ticket, but you still retain ownership and end-user interaction. This is how it works:

a) Your agent gets stuck, so adds a private comment to the ticket by unchecking the box Requester can see this comment. Then reassigns the ticket to the group Aegent Tier 2 Support. Do not assign to a specific Assignee.

b) An MEI agent pulls the ticket, creating a new agent assignment.

c) The MEI agent makes a private comment (i.e. that will stay with the ticket but the end user will not see). We do this by unchecking the box Requester can see this comment. After finishing the comment, he or she then manually changes the ticket assignee back to the original (your) help desk agent.

d) Your agent either adds a comment to the end user (not private, answer or further detail requested) or makes another private comment and changes assignee back to the MEI agent.

7. Steps c) and d) are repeated until the issue is resolved. In this way, the ticket gets passed back and forth perhaps 2 or 3 times before it’s resolved. All comments from MEI stay with the ticket, and Aegent’s agent retains end-user contact and learns more about mec over time. Emails between the support agents and the requester will automatically let each party know when the next input is needed.

8. Please submit your help tickets (initiated in your office) to us through the Help Desk, not by phoning directly. We need to do this for our own internal work flow, but also to make sure we are focusing our documentation and development efforts effectively.

Your agent(s) on duty can choose to interact with support tickets completely by email, and Zendesk will record all interactions. The other option is through the web site (links straight into tickets are indicated within email messages). Escalation can only be handled through the web site. There is no way to hand off a ticket through email.

To Test the System

Set up a different email address from your own (either through your IT department, or online with webmail), then send us a ticket to request a test user with that email address. We will manually place the test user in one of your supported organizations. From there, you can use that test user to submit tickets, and you can respond to them as yourself.

Please let us know of any unexpected help desk behavior, and any suggestions to make this help desk better.