Writing a Good Helpdesk Ticket
“I submitted a help desk ticket via email and they won’t get back to me!!!!” – Jon “I left a voice mail, but the help desk never gets back to me..” – Jane
The Bethel IMS Help Desk supports you and your day-to-day work. Whether your report isn’t printing, you can’t log-on to your computer, or your laptop won’t connect to the projector – we’re here to help and keep your downtime/issues to a minimum.
We receive a lot of help requests, so here are some tips that will help us help you faster and more efficiently.
Write a Descriptive Summary
Use wording in the subject of your email that states what the specific problem is and what you are seeing. Try using something like this:
Cannot log in to computer. Says account is locked
Instead of this:
Help, computer problem???
When the help desk team looks at the subject of the first ticket example they can immediately route it to someone who can assist with a log in or account issue.
The second subject line example requires us to open the ticket and read the details which may cause a delay in routing.
Examples of descriptive summaries:
- Speakers are not working in A 223
- Phone is not working in room SS 254
- Cannot login to my computer in room B119
- I cannot access Jane’s calendar today. It worked yesterday.
- Website X is loading very slowly. Others seem to work.
Put details in the body of the email
In the body of the email put all the relevant details to the problem such as the room the problem is occurring in, the specific computer, printer, desk, projector, etc. and the time that the problem occured. Anything you may know that is relevant will help our team get to this faster. For example:
- What is the problem?
- When was the last time this worked (if ever)?
- Does this happen every time you do X?
- What is the room number?
- Which specific computer or telephone is involved?
- When did you first notice this?
- What was supposed to happen, but didn’t?
- What device or program is having the problem?
- What errors and/or error codes are you receiving?
- What were you doing immediately prior to having this problem?
- Has this problem happened before?
It’s a good idea to include your contact information such as your email or a phone number so we can reach you if we have questions. Having the information ready makes it easier for the help desk team to contact you.
Follow Up
“My ticket has been open for three days and no one has contacted me yet.”
We do our best to answer tickets as they come in. Sometimes we are faster than other times depending on the severity of your issues.
Often times we try to contact the ticket creator by email or voicemail and wait to hear back about a clarification. A good way to follow up on your ticket is email us with the ticket number.
Creating a new help desk ticket requesting an update to another help desk ticket will take extra time for the team member looking up the information.