# Expectations in regards to ticket reply



## danni (Sep 25, 2013)

Hello,

I would like to know what you guys expectations are in regards to support ticket response time.

If we devide them into 3 provider types

- Budget

- Standard? / Generic
- Premium

Thanks


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## serverian (Sep 25, 2013)

It doesn't matter if you give them away for free. You need to reply emergency tickets within the first 10 minutes. Regular tickets can be replied within the first 1-2 hours.


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## MannDude (Sep 25, 2013)

Within a couple hours.

I mark my tickets accordingly. If it's a low priority request I mark it as such, and for those I'm  happy with an update in 24 hours. Regular priority, an hour or two max. HIGH priority, as soon as possible.


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## danni (Sep 25, 2013)

Thanks for your answers guys.

Right now im just very angry, its been 2 days since last reply from my current provider, which just to me is very unacceptable.
I bumped the ticket 11 hours ago, just to see if the ticket was being overseen, but still no reply.


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## drmike (Sep 25, 2013)

Yikes, folks sure are liberal with the ticket times.

Regardless of pricing, I expect to see 30 minute or less ticket responses.  Those might not be complete resolutions, but at minimum a live human working on the issue and some update to that effect.

Average ticket times that sit at or above 30 minutes across all the tickets indicate a problem with the provider --- to me at least.


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## WebSearchingPro (Sep 25, 2013)

I usually expect within 30 minutes during weekdays at normal operating hours for the companies locale. Otherwise, on weekends and nights I expect it to be replied to on Monday or at least the next morning. 

It also depends on the scale though, if there is a major outage, I expect it to be worked on without any tickets or notifications from me as a customer regardless of time/day.


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## MannDude (Sep 25, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Yikes, folks sure are liberal with the ticket times.
> 
> Regardless of pricing, I expect to see 30 minute or less ticket responses.  Those might not be complete resolutions, but at minimum a live human working on the issue and some update to that effect.
> 
> Average ticket times that sit at or above 30 minutes across all the tickets indicate a problem with the provider --- to me at least.


I'd rather wait for a detailed response that is helpful and addresses my problem, letting me know the support tech actually read my inquiry as opposed to getting a _fast_ response that is lacking in content.


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## Francisco (Sep 25, 2013)

MannDude said:


> I'd rather wait for a detailed response that is helpful and addresses my problem, letting me know the support tech actually read my inquiry as opposed to getting a _fast_ response that is lacking in content.


I agree.

Getting BS replies of 'yes we have picked up your ticket' does me no good if I need something fixed up.

Granted, getting a solid reply right away is excellent too 

Francisco


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## Magiobiwan (Sep 25, 2013)

I, personally, do my best to not make filler replies. As a client, I also prefer meaningful replies which are actually USEFUL, rather than a "We are working on this problem. I hope to have informed you sufficiently." response.


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## TheLinuxBug (Sep 25, 2013)

The group I work with specializes in an average response time of 15 minutes.  This may be just an update to let you know we are working on the issue, or a complete resolution to this issue depending on the severity.  Now, this is by no means low end support services, but we do have a mixture of services from shared cPanel to HA Cloud Servers.  We extend the same support quality to all of our services. 

Now, for low end services like we are used to here and on LE*, I think at least receiving a response that the ticket is being handled is nice with-in the hour.  The resolution can take up to 6 hours and I will still see that as acceptable.  However, sometimes when companies don't take the time to at least know they are working on things,  6 hours can seem like a long time.   Some groups on the very low end still have a 12 hour response, which can be acceptable if I am only paying a few dollars a month for that service.  Things on the 7-20$ a month range I would expect at least an update with-in the hour and a resolution with-in 4-6 hours.

My 2 cents.

Cheers!


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## ZekeServers (Sep 25, 2013)

We fall short often with an all-volunteer staff however we try for 30 minute reply and 2 hour resolution.


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## HostUS-Alexander (Sep 25, 2013)

I try to get all tickets <1 hour, but sometimes if a ticket is at an awkward time (say i go to a drive to the shop) It ends up being a few hours.

- Alexander


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## maounique (Sep 25, 2013)

Here is a mixed picture.

Basically, it depends.

We have automated warnings about problems, from ping and ssh monitoring to DoS, both incoming and outgoing so those are handled within a few minutes without needing any ticket. Same with storage latency, load, even pps count.

The remaining issues are usually about specific problems, like customer being unable to find the rDNS setting in solus or getting an error because the subdomain is not yet propagated, sales inquiries, maxmind issues, asking us to deliver the server faster (if the order is done today and payment tomorrow, it may be that it slips under the first page and  might be overlooked). Those are handled within a few hours at max. It did happen to have a few tickets overlooked, some for days until got bumped, I hope it didnt happen for a couple of months now.


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## WSWD (Sep 25, 2013)

danni said:


> Thanks for your answers guys.
> 
> 
> Right now im just very angry, its been 2 days since last reply from my current provider, which just to me is very unacceptable.
> ...


Just to note that "bumping" the tickets will normally put them back to the bottom of the queue as it will be showing up with a newer time.  Very frustrating, I know, but bumping the ticket is usually the last thing you want to do.


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## blergh (Sep 25, 2013)

24 hours is acceptable if it's just some 10$/M VPS, i expect less as the amount gets higher.


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## TheLinuxBug (Sep 25, 2013)

> Just to note that "bumping" the tickets will normally put them back to the bottom of the queue as it will be showing up with a newer time.  Very frustrating, I know, but bumping the ticket is usually the last thing you want to do.


@WSWD,

Sorry, but, what?!  If you bump a ticket in most systems that I have seen (assuming you sort your tickets newest to oldest to be able to see new issues and emergencies first) it end up at the top of the list as it is the newest.  It sounds strange to me that you would do this in reverse and have them on the bottom?  

Cheers!


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## maounique (Sep 25, 2013)

WSWD said:


> Just to note that "bumping" the tickets will normally put them back to the bottom of the queue as it will be showing up with a newer time.  Very frustrating, I know, but bumping the ticket is usually the last thing you want to do.


Nope, we do not take them in order, we solve each and every ticket as soon as we are on it and dont stop until all are done. I suppose most providers on the low end do the same, those with hundreds of thousands of customers and a dedicated helpdesk are rare.


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## drmike (Sep 25, 2013)

Cost shouldn't have any bearing on responsiveness.

Companies experiencing high wait times on support even picking up the ticket for processing really need to reconsider their business model and affording actual helpdesk staff.

I do expect / allow lousier customer support where cost is less.  That's basically quality of responses, not the timeliness of such.

Two styles of support I detest:

1. We copy everything from Google / know nothing.

2. Our comprehension of English is so small that automagic language translation tools from native tongue would be improvement in communications.  Folks outsourcing helpdesk/support to these folks, GROWL just throw your money in a chipper.


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## perennate (Sep 25, 2013)

I expect VPS and billing issues to be handled. I don't require replies to the former.

If I fail to understand how to use the system (something common like SolusVM) I don't necessarily expect a reply but it's nice to get one.


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## concerto49 (Sep 25, 2013)

Cogent responds to tickets within 2 days for support and 5 days for billing. Best sla


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## Francisco (Sep 25, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> Cogent responds to tickets within 2 days for support and 5 days for billing. Best sla


Call them?

Whenever I needed nullroutes/network adjustments I always had great luck with their phone-in support.

Francisco


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## hasel92 (Sep 25, 2013)

Within 24 hours is acceptable.

Although its budget VPS, but sometimes some provider just seem doesn't want to answer simple question that can be solved within a reply.

The worst part is it take 3 days for them to reply. It may be budget..

But business is still business..


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## KuJoe (Sep 25, 2013)

We try to respond to tickets within an hour (current average is 18 minutes) but we make sure to outline everything so our clients know what to expect when they contact us for support before they open a ticket: https://my.securedragon.net/submitticket.php

For the most part clients are understanding because we provide them with exactly what to expect, normally clients are blown away when we have a resolution in under 5 minutes or respond in under 1 minute. Some clients on the other hand, will open 10 tickets a month and complain when it takes more 30 minutes to resolve their problem at 3AM for their $8/year VPS.

I would say that 50% of my ticket replies are simply links to a KB article I wrote months ago or a link to our TOS or website. Sometimes the client will be pissed that I don't just answer their question but at $25/hour (minimum 1 hour) I don't think they want to be invoiced for something that they can find themselves.


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## wlanboy (Sep 26, 2013)

It depends on the topic of the ticket.

I am missing the option to set a category for a ticket. The support would be able to see if


I want something (ipv6, rdns, iptables modules, change location),
if something is broken (SolusVM casualty, network issue)
if I want to ask for something (E.T.A. for features, AUP)
First and third are totally fine to be answered within 24 hours. Second should be answered as fast as possible.

And it is totally ok to get an automated answer if:


it is a known issue (yup the node is down)
someone is allready working on it (we are working on it and come back in xx minutes)


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## SkylarM (Sep 26, 2013)

Non critical issues in 24 hours or less is what I would expect from a provider. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by a ticket response then seriously disappointed. I typically try and answer tickets and provide a resolution as quickly as possible, but that varies dependent on the request and what else is occurring at the time - some tickets may have priority if they come in at the same time.

Things like ARIN's 3 day response policy still blows my mind that it's their standard. At least they have a published standard so you know for sure it's going to take ages


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## KuJoe (Sep 26, 2013)

SkylarM said:


> Things like ARIN's 3 day response policy still blows my mind that it's their standard. At least they have a published standard so you know for sure it's going to take ages


If it's something critical or you want to push it along faster you can give them a ring. When we were getting our first /22 from them we filled out the paperwork on a Friday and we were told it wouldn't be assigned until Monday so we called them up and we had the /22 before end of business that day.


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## WSWD (Sep 26, 2013)

TheLinuxBug said:


> @WSWD,
> 
> Sorry, but, what?!  If you bump a ticket in most systems that I have seen (assuming you sort your tickets newest to oldest to be able to see new issues and emergencies first) it end up at the top of the list as it is the newest.  It sounds strange to me that you would do this in reverse and have them on the bottom?
> 
> Cheers!


So you resolve the newest tickets first instead of the ones that have been sitting around waiting for a reply?  That seems back-assward if you ask me.  If that's the case, the old tickets would take even longer to be replied to, because you would be giving priority to the new tickets at the top.


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## SkylarM (Sep 26, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> If it's something critical or you want to push it along faster you can give them a ring. When we were getting our first /22 from them we filled out the paperwork on a Friday and we were told it wouldn't be assigned until Monday so we called them up and we had the /22 before end of business that day.


Yeah I figured that out after a while. Giving them a ring and having a voice to a name seems to make them work faster


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## Magiobiwan (Sep 26, 2013)

I leave my WHMCS Ticket View sorted by newest first, so I can see the new stuff first without having to look through anything still in the queue waiting for something to happen. I try to take care of oldest stuff first, though if there's something new that comes in which is a quick fix, I'll get that out of the way first.


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## kaniini (Sep 26, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Yikes, folks sure are liberal with the ticket times.
> 
> Regardless of pricing, I expect to see 30 minute or less ticket responses.  Those might not be complete resolutions, but at minimum a live human working on the issue and some update to that effect.
> 
> Average ticket times that sit at or above 30 minutes across all the tickets indicate a problem with the provider --- to me at least.


People with this attitude are why helpdesks give worthless responses now.


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## Wintereise (Sep 26, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> Cogent responds to tickets within 2 days for support and 5 days for billing. Best sla


<10 minutes in update cases and IF you're within business hours, actually.

I don't know what people whine about, but Cogent's support is *far* better than most carriers at their scale.


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## lbft (Sep 26, 2013)

ZekeServers said:


> We fall short often with an all-volunteer staff


What. What kind of moron would volunteer for a business?

And how could you trust someone who's not getting paid with your customers' personal information and private data?


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## kaniini (Sep 26, 2013)

lbft said:


> What. What kind of moron would volunteer for a business?
> 
> And how could you trust someone who's not getting paid with your customers' personal information and private data?


I wish I could have an all-volunteer staff.  Sounds awesome for my pocketbook.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 26, 2013)

lbft said:


> What. What kind of moron would volunteer for a business?
> 
> And how could you trust someone who's not getting paid with your customers' personal information and private data?


This moron.  I worked for Fran voluntarily for years - he had to force me to start accepting wages.  We're practically family - it's never been about the money.


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## lbft (Sep 26, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> This moron.  I worked for Fran voluntarily for years - he had to force me to start accepting wages.  We're practically family - it's never been about the money.


Fair enough, I can understand doing it for a friend.


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## AnthonySmith (Sep 26, 2013)

It depends on the time of day and nature of the ticket, I will read every ticket that comes in within 15 - 30 minutes however if it is something not service affecting and not getting instant resolution is not actually going to affect anything one way or the other then I will leave it for later if I am in the middle of something.

e.g. I set up a subscription but also paid manually can I get a refund for one of the payments - that will get dealt with as low priority regardless.

I have lost my password to my mysql database can you help - again not really my fault and no I cant help anyway so low priority response times.

I take a human approach generally and use the customer selected priority as a guide to how important they feel it is not how important it actually is, I get high priority tickets all the time with silly stuff all the time so I just make a logical decision on priority myself.

I never give filler only replies, if you want a "ok looking at this for you" reply within xx minutes don't buy from Inception Hosting because this is a waste of my time and yours.


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## KuJoe (Sep 26, 2013)

Wait, people get paid to answer support tickets???? I need a raise then, my $0.00/hour makes tickets less fun.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 26, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> Wait, people get paid to answer support tickets???? I need a raise then, my $0.00/hour makes tickets less fun.


Spend some time working with Anthony.  He makes tickets a LOT more fun :3


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## mitgib (Sep 26, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> Spend some time working with Anthony.  He makes tickets a LOT more fun :3


You mean he stopped applying customer repellant?


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 26, 2013)

mitgib said:


> You mean he stopped applying customer repellant?


Hey now, tragedy can be amusing too


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## mitgib (Sep 26, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> Hey now, tragedy can be amusing too


She was, but I stopped playing WoC years ago


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## TheLinuxBug (Sep 26, 2013)

> So you resolve the newest tickets first instead of the ones that have been sitting around waiting for a reply?  That seems back-assward if you ask me.  If that's the case, the old tickets would take even longer to be replied to, because you would be giving priority to the new tickets at the top.


 @WSWD,

Like @Mao said earlier, when a ticket comes in it gets worked till its resolved or till the point where there is a needed response from the customer.  When you actually work through your tickets as they come in by the time they are reaching the bottom of the page they are waiting for client reply anyways, so them replying will bump the ticket back to the top of the queue as it should.  I am not sure why you would start a ticket and then not complete it, doesn't sound very productive to me.  Most of our clients issues are usually resolved within the first 15-60 minutes.  Things taking longer than that are usually because of delayed replies from the customer only.

As I said before though, I do not work for a "Low End" host though, so our standard of care is a little higher possibly.

Edit: on a side note, would a mod or admin care to correct the spelling in the thread title? "Expectations" instead of "Expections"

Cheers!


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## WSWD (Sep 26, 2013)

TheLinuxBug said:


> @WSWD,
> 
> Like @Mao said earlier, when a ticket comes in it gets worked till its resolved or till the point where there is a needed response from the customer.  When you actually work through your tickets as they come in by the time they are reaching the bottom of the page they are waiting for client reply anyways, so them replying will bump the ticket back to the top of the queue as it should.  I am not sure why you would start a ticket and then not complete it, doesn't sound very productive to me.  Most of our clients issues are usually resolved within the first 15-60 minutes.  Things taking longer than that are usually because of delayed replies from the customer only.


We do exactly the same thing.  But with hosts where it is taking days to respond to tickets, that obviously isn't happening, hence my advice to the OP.  The majority of budget hosts (especially the large ones) I've ever dealt with operate in the manner I described, where new replies, tickets, etc. are opened at the bottom of the queue, so that the existing/older tickets are noted at the top and can be resolved.


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## egihosting (Sep 27, 2013)

We usually respond to support and network tickets within 10 minutes or so.  Sales and billing during business hours, but everyone is checking email via their smartphones so something urgent will get a reply regardless.


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## kaniini (Sep 27, 2013)

egihosting said:


> We usually respond to support and network tickets within 10 minutes or so.  Sales and billing during business hours, but everyone is checking email via their smartphones so something urgent will get a reply regardless.


Yeah, well okay.

But do you usually resolve the issue within 10 minutes or so?

Again, pointless replies are stupid.


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## KuJoe (Sep 27, 2013)

I would rather have a pointless reply than no reply at all. For me, just knowing a living, breathing person has looked at my ticket makes me feel 100x better. For example, when I open a ticket with cPanel, I refresh the page like crazy until I see the ticket assigned to somebody and then I close the tab and go do something else.

For us, we mark tickets as "In Progress" after we review them if we don't have anything to add but that at least tells the client that we've looked at the ticket and are working on it. I personally don't like doing "we're working on it" replies unless it's a major issue and we've got 30+ tickets for the same thing then the copy and paste replies will be given out but if I'm a client I would rather have that reply than an hour of silence.


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## Jade (Sep 27, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> I would rather have a pointless reply than no reply at all. For me, just knowing a living, breathing person has looked at my ticket makes me feel 100x better. For example, when I open a ticket with cPanel, I refresh the page like crazy until I see the ticket assigned to somebody and then I close the tab and go do something else.
> 
> For us, we mark tickets as "In Progress" after we review them if we don't have anything to add but that at least tells the client that we've looked at the ticket and are working on it. I personally don't like doing "we're working on it" replies unless it's a major issue and we've got 30+ tickets for the same thing then the copy and paste replies will be given out but if I'm a client I would rather have that reply than an hour of silence.


I agree. A human reply is a whole lot better than a computer generated reply. At least take a look at the ticket and write that just so you know what the ticket is requesting.


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## Echelon (Sep 28, 2013)

What I find a bit concerning is the trend of caring more about response times and less about actual resolution of the issue at hand. If you get a response in 5 minutes, but resolution doesn't happen until 5 days later, how useful is that?


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## KuJoe (Sep 28, 2013)

Echelon said:


> What I find a bit concerning is the trend of caring more about response times and less about actual resolution of the issue at hand. If you get a response in 5 minutes, but resolution doesn't happen until 5 days later, how useful is that?


At least you'll know you'll get a quick response when you ask for a refund.


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## AnthonySmith (Sep 28, 2013)

Well no not really @KuJoe  

You get to know someone has seen your refund request but that's all  personally I would find it more frustrating to know someone has looked at my ticket, read it and decided to deal with it later.

Its a no win situation though, you cant operate in all the different ways described all at the same time, no one agrees on what is best so I think each company is best off just doing what is best for them.

I like things fixed, I don't like someone to distract me from the resolution time by fluffing me with a fluffing message before they even attempt to fix it. seems kind of an all look and no substance approach to me.

I do on occasion send a "I am looking at this for you now" message but thats only when someone opens a ticket that makes me think "hmm.... what" and I genuinely do need to work on it to find out what is going on but they are kept up to date with findings all the way along the line.


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## DamienSB (Sep 28, 2013)

>personally I would find it more frustrating to know someone has looked at my ticket, read it and decided to deal with it later.

This.


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## Jack (Sep 28, 2013)

I think it depends on what you are asking in the ticket...

If it's when will you have x feature ready and they have given an ETA that has passed it should be replied to pretty quick if its just hey this isnt working on my VPS because i rm -rf'd / then it shouldn't be the same as its there fault and most providers offer console access.


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## FHN-Eric (Sep 28, 2013)

I do it based on department, support is generally within 30 minutes, billing and sales is generally 1-2 hours during business hours, and abuse is 2-4 hours during business hours. However, with bigger companies, there is still huge delays. With Godaddy, I find the support gets back to me in 24 hours, and it's a computer generated response.


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## Shados (Sep 29, 2013)

KuJoe said:


> I would rather have a pointless reply than no reply at all. For me, just knowing a living, breathing person has looked at my ticket makes me feel 100x better. For example, when I open a ticket with cPanel, I refresh the page like crazy until I see the ticket assigned to somebody and then I close the tab and go do something else.
> 
> For us, we mark tickets as "In Progress" after we review them if we don't have anything to add but that at least tells the client that we've looked at the ticket and are working on it. I personally don't like doing "we're working on it" replies unless it's a major issue and we've got 30+ tickets for the same thing then the copy and paste replies will be given out but if I'm a client I would rather have that reply than an hour of silence.


That's pretty much the reason the company I work for (we deal mostly with issues logged by phone) stopped taking voicemails and swapped to having some of our guys act as dedicated 1st-level techs and just get initial details+log/resolve trivial (<5 min) jobs, while the rest call back  to troubleshoot/resolve logged jobs. Objectively, things get done slower (probably 5~10% average overhead), but people are a lot happier this way. Seriously, cut down complaints by at least an order of magnitude.


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