Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, June 30, 2005:
Help Desk Ticket System
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.HelpSpot is a help desk ticket system and yet that label, ticket, never appears in the system. It's one of the first things I choose NOT to do when designing HelpSpot. In my time working with both good and bad help desks I've found that the major difference between them isn't usually the people per se. They are often hard working and relatively competent. No the difference is usually attitude. A bad help desk almost always has a bad attitude. They look at each new ticket in the system with disdain.
I mean just think about the word ticket. It's so impersonal, it makes me think of standing at a deli counter. Do we really want our employees feeling like they're behind a deli counter? What about our customers? Every time I get an email with a help ticket ID I inevitably feel a little down. It just has that, I'm standing in line feeling to it.
So HelpSpot uses the word "request" where other systems use support ticket or issue. Now I'm not claiming this is a revolution, or that it will turn bad employees good, or make angry customers happy. What I do think is that over time it can help change the tone, just the tone, around the help desk. Let's try something together shall we?
Say this out loud:
"Did you see that new ticket from Bill Sanders?"
Now:
"Did you see that new request from Bill Sanders?"
Yes it's subtle, very subtle. But you can hear the inflection the upper one would be said with (especially if you've worked in IT) vs the lower. Will it help? I don't know, but I think it can't hurt and over a year I could see it perhaps changing attitudes just a hair. Making help desk tickets seem just a little tiny bit friendlier, perhaps making responses to those "requests" a little bit nicer.
From a business perspective it's interesting because to me it's a feature that has no marketing value. How would you describe this in a feature list? It also actually hurts from a search engine perspective because nobody searches for help desk request system or help desk request tracking, where as help desk ticket system and help desk ticket tracking do get searched on. But this is one of those features that I hope will pay off in results even if UserScapes customers don't know why the help desk seems more upbeat since they installed HelpSpot
Discussion
Ian, I think it's a wonderful idea. I actually think that kind of thing works, look at how the Joel on Software forums actually work very differently from other forums because of the thought Joel put on the design.
I think you are wrong in that it can't be used for business / marketing purposes. You probably should add a few more features in order to properly do it, but it can be the roots of "the customer-sensitive help desk system - make your customers feel a personalized experience". Vocabulary eliminating is one thing, another would be, for instance, to forego the customer the need to see the Ticket/Request ID (probably there's only one active ticket per customer, so you can use the e-mail address - if there are more, assign per-address ID's, such that the user sees "Answer to your request #2" or similar in the response e-mails).
Most big corps/lazy developers/etc... don't put that much thought in the system, if you put that effort yourself, it will pay off.
Best!
Created by J on 06.30.2005 11:07 am
Thanks J. You're probably right, I need to put some more thought into the marketing aspects.
I've given alot of thought to the ID thing. HelpSpot really doesn't use the ID for customers but it does send them an access key. The trouble with using only email addresses is that it's very insecure because anyone can just enter your email to see if you have a ticket. I also refuse to force users to register, so any security cannot force a registration. I hate hate hate help desk systems that make you register to access them. I'm already made with a problem, but now I need to remember my password or create an account? argh. That's a different rant though 
HelpSpot's forum system is similar to the JOS I think though I've never seen the administrative side of the JOS system. It's really just that it's basic. You don't need all of those fancy things that PHPBB and the others give you. For some sites all those features make alot of sense, but when you're just trying to talk internally about issues or help customers, those features just get in the way.
This is probably about the 4th forum system I've built and the simple ones always get the most use.
Created by Ian on 06.30.2005 11:07 am
Sorry to be picky, but it's "per se" rather than "per say"!
Created by John Topley on 06.30.2005 11:07 am
Fixed, thanks! I always miss that one.
Created by Ian on 06.30.2005 11:07 am
Ian, that one's a toughy. Probably the best is to ask for the e-mail and then send an e-mail back with a hotlink, so that no one else gets it. As long as they're not switching computers, a cookie could do it.
Anyway, I just wanted to write because I _do_ think that there are lots and lots and lots of gaps in the marker, only if people are willing to invest the kind of effort you are investing. Good luck with everything!
Created by J on 06.30.2005 11:07 am
I think this is a good move, Ian. You're definitely right about the attitude thing. Attitude makes a giant difference in all parts of an organization, and the help desk is one of the main customer touchpoints, so it's vital.
This is certainly not the kind of thing that you list as a bullet-point feature. But, if you have enough little touches like this they *will* sink in and give buyers and users the warm fuzzies.
-----
Created by Kevin Dangoor on 06.30.2005 11:07 am