Ticket Monsters of Customer Service Meet the monsters and learn how to vanquish them Read more: https://www.zendesk.com/resources/dealing-with-difficult-customer-tickets

1. Ticket Monsters of Customer Service

2. All who have chosen the
honorable path of
customer service have
encountered these tickets

3. Be not afraid!

4. Meet the monsters
and learn how to
vanquish them

5. Zombie Tickets

6. Zombie tickets refuse to die. No
matter how perfectly the question
is answered, the ticket just
keeps getting back up for more.

7. Enter: Agent Ben

9. Zombie tickets can’t be solved with
a simple answer. Eliminate the
back-and-forth dynamic of email
with a phone call and solve a ticket
for good. When all questions are
answered, ask to close the ticket.

10. STEPS TO ELIMINATE ZOMBIE TICKETS
1
2
3
4
Include documentation and training on the dashboard
so new customers can get a handle on products and services
Foster healthy FAQs and forums so customers can
find answers on their own
Provide a “Related Topics” widget
Provide proactive support for better feature adoption

11. Hydra Tickets

12. With Hydra tickets, answering one
results in the creation of two more.
Customers sometimes think they’ll get
a faster response if they send three
tickets at once, all asking the same
question, via three different channels:

13. 1
2
3
Email: “Am I allowed to post my blog entry on your site?”
Twitter: “What does it take to publish my blog
post on your site?”
Support portal: “I am interested in publishing
my blog on your site. Here is the link to the post.”

14. What happens? One ticket gets
assigned to support, one to the
Director of Content, and one to
a Community Manager.

15. Enter: Agent Herc

17. First, send each person involved an
email to get them on the same page
and aware of what’s happening. Then
choose one person to respond.

18. Next, merge all three tickets
into one and then respond to the
requester. Apologize for any
confusion, and make sure all
questions are answered.

19. Finally, vigilance is the best way to
prevent Hydra tickets. Keep an eye on a
requestor’s open tickets and make
sure several with the same info haven’t
been submitted. If so, merge them.

20. Vampire Tickets

21. Vampire tickets arrive after business
hours and are discovered the next
morning. Customers from different
time zones who submit questions are
forced to wait for a response.

22. Enter: Agent Harker

24. When discovered, Vampire
tickets must be dealt with right
away. Escalate them and solve
quickly. Set up an automation to
remind agents to respond asap.

25. Develop a permanent plan for
dispatching with Vampire tickets.
A follow-the-sun model can help.
Triggers can be used to automatically
inform customers they’ve reached out
after business hours and assure them
a response will come asap.

26. Poseidon Tickets

27. Poseidon tickets are a deluge of
customer communications: calls,
tweets, Facebook posts, chats. All
about the same issue, all coming
in at the same time.

28. Enter: Agent Odysseus

30. POSEIDON TICKETS: FIRST STEPS
1
2
3
Social media managers should respond via a unified front:
“We’re aware of the issue and doing all we can to fix it.”
Respond to all of the tickets with the same general message
and send them in bulk to the correct department
Steps 1 and 2 should provide the time needed for the issue
to be addressed

31. Add a custom drop down form for an
issue that could drown your support
team. When customers see the
choice in the drop down menu, they’ll
realize the issue is known. All related
tickets will be sent to the correct place.

32. Mummy Tickets

33. Mummy tickets come from customers
who remember the early days, asking
about features, unfamiliar pricing
plans, ex-employees, or promotions
not offered in years.

34. Enter: Agent Whemple

36. A macro, an automatic predefined
response, will help address mummy
tickets that reference things that are
out of date. This communication may
quickly settle the issue.

37. Several mummy tickets can mean
communications require updates.
Newsletters, blog posts, social
channels, and in-product messaging
should be used to ensure all
customers are aware of changes,
like pricing structures.

38. Werewolf Tickets

39. Werewolf tickets are nice and
friendly one moment, howling
mad the next. Calming the
customer down is very difficult.

40. Enter: Agent Talbot

42. Enlisting the help of a customer
service manager or director is a
wise choice for Werewolf tickets.
They are highly trained in dealing
with difficult situations.

43. If a customer vents on social
media, offer a public response.
Respond via the channel that was
used for the complaint and try to
solve the actual issue publicly.

44. Keep in mind: you can’t win
them all. The most important
thing is to learn, improve,
and move on.

45. Download the ebook:
The Mysterious Case of Ticket X