Support / ticketing software

Support / ticketing software

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Does anybody run support ticket software such as Scout Help or Fresh Desk?

If so, how well have you managed to integrate this with your ongoing jobs and overall PM?

Replies (12)

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By cheekychappy
11th Feb 2016 12:19

Are you clients going to an accountant or Argos?

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By kjd
11th Feb 2016 12:35

@cheekychappy

I think it all depends how you run your practice as to whether such software is viable.

 

Ours is predominantly online, with email making up 80%+ of communication.  On that basis it's easy for inboxes to get really cluttered with little focus.

 

I definitely think such a system has a place but so far most of the stuff seems to be standalone, without the ability to really integrate with ongoing job/task management.

 

 

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By roblpm
11th Feb 2016 12:35

Well unlike cheeky chappy I know what you are talking about!
We use tasks in Iris which aren't very good! Unfortunately having a non integrated system is not a great idea for us so we carry on.

Iris PM hasnt changed in the 8 years we have had it!

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By cheekychappy
11th Feb 2016 12:43

It was a joke. Jokes are not meant to be taken seriously. Jokes are meant to be taken in jest.

I have a high street practice, but have many “online clients”.

I just don’t see a need for a ticketing system.

I receive a lot of emails, but they are mostly cleared as they come in. Most emails don’t require much thought or research as they are routine queries. I’m a sole practitioner with profits of circa £120k, maybe your practice is much bigger than mine though.

Even if my practice was purely online, and I had staff, I still wouldn’t see a need for a ticketing system. It works for software providers, but I think it would cheapen an accountancy practice.

Each to their own though.

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Replying to TaxTeddy:
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By roblpm
11th Feb 2016 12:50

Sorry..............

cheekychappy wrote:
It was a joke. Jokes are not meant to be taken seriously. Jokes are meant to be taken in jest. I have a high street practice, but have many “online clients”. I just don’t see a need for a ticketing system. I receive a lot of emails, but they are mostly cleared as they come in. Most emails don’t require much thought or research as they are routine queries. I’m a sole practitioner with profits of circa £120k, maybe your practice is much bigger than mine though. Even if my practice was purely online, and I had staff, I still wouldn’t see a need for a ticketing system. It works for software providers, but I think it would cheapen an accountancy practice. Each to their own though.

OK joke accepted! No offence meant!

I used to work in IT so we always had trouble ticketing systems. The client wouldn't know that we had one, but if someone took a phone call they would be easily able to see the history and pass the client on to the correct person.

Now I run a 10 person Accountancy practice we need a way of tracking one offs that aren't compliance jobs. Thinks like tax enquiries, client questions etc.

As I said it would be great if Iris put something better than tasks in their very expensive software!

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By kjd
11th Feb 2016 12:45

Cheapen an accountancy practice

Can I ask in what sense?

 

Surely it's just a back-end mechanism to better manage things.

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RLI
By lionofludesch
11th Feb 2016 12:56

August

I'd like some tickets for the Challenge Cup Final in August.

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By MissAccounting
11th Feb 2016 12:57

I've had experience of Zen Desk in a retail environment and it was excellent so worth checking out. If its set up properly then people wont even know its a ticket/help desk software thats being used.

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By kjd
11th Feb 2016 16:49

Ticketing with task management

Ticketing wise they all look pretty good but ideally i'd want something with inbuilt task management and none of them seem to do that so far.

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By Sheepy306
11th Feb 2016 18:49

Purpose?
I use BTC PM for all recurring compliance tasks, but I also enter one-off tasks in it too, whether that's a company car query or a full blown tax enquiry, they all get entered with start dates, deadlines, notes, reminder dates etc
I imagine that Iris operates in the same way. How doesn't it work for you? What do you want out of it?

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By kjd
11th Feb 2016 19:30

Email integration

I want the email conversations to be more integrated with the jobs themselves.  

 

For example: at the moment we kick a job off via our CRM which would generally involve an outbound email to the client [records request perhaps].  If it's a bookkeeping job there could be a handful of emails [queries being answered] before the job actually closes.  I wish these emails were more tightly integrated with the jobs themselves as opposed to just sitting in an inbox having to be manually monitored and shuffled around.

 

Then there's adhoc emails in from clients. Quick ones get dealt with straight away, others wait their turn but it's then very easy to let them slide down the inbox when you're working off a job list in another system.  If the email in were to automatically create a job, ongoing chatter back and forth being attached to it with the status being automatically updated [active/pending/closed] I think things would run much smoother.

 

I'm no huge techie so I don't know exactly how it would look but that's the nuts and bolts of it.  I can deal with non-integrated tax/AP etc but workflow/comms not being so is a major bug bear.

 

PS I too was previously with BTC, moved to TaxFiler last year. Great guys but I simply couldn't use their PM module so congrats to you on that front.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
12th Feb 2016 11:42

Relationship management

We were one of the first firms to take up Iris PM when it first came out, 12-13 years ago I think, and worked with them over features like data mining.

Iris is based around Jobs, be they the standard Accs or tax prep ones or self built ones like "New client takeup" "Client dumping" "VAT returns" etc etc.  Within those jobs you can determine stages for completion, assigning each to dates and staff members and there are also tasks, that can be assigned to clients, jobs & staff.

For outgoing stuff, like accounts & tax return jobs, it is good because it also has a Word generator to create standard letters & documents, populating text with tax liabilities, names etc etc from the huge database and now all of this can be directly uploaded to the secure Openspace collaboration site, where clients can download and approve electronically.

So you can do most of what you want in handling client "jobs" but it doesn't link properly with systems like Outlook for email and calendar and now feels clunky and making sure you keep all the stuff ticked and configured takes far longer than would a modern system.

In the early years of development and improvements, and then when client dashboards were being developed, I can remember us and others saying that what it lacked was the sort of features and functions their support team worked with, ie a ticketing system to better manage client "transactions" and this is even more the case today.

Client jobs are obviously still important but software should be able to take care of most of the ticking automatically, and with compliance work shrinking, in terms of the hours we spend on it, and other stuff taking over, the holy grail for me is a way to manage and monitor all the emails, phone calls, texts, and tasks, regardless of whether they relate to a "job" or not, in other words a client support/CRM system, capable of handing all ins & outs of whatever takes place between us & clients and enabling us to better recognise and instigate marketing and other proactive activities.

So I'm a fan kjd

 

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