Site done, what next? Organization of web-studio support services

Very often, when ordering a site, customers choose a company (or freelancer) only in terms of price / quality ratio. At the same time, such an important parameter as further maintenance is not paid attention to. Although it is fast, professional and inexpensive support most often is the key to the success of the site and customer satisfaction.

What happens when there is no dedicated support service? The client is waiting for a response, waiting for improvements - but at least some reaction! - and does not receive it at the expected time with the expected quality. Then the client is looking for other options.
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He turns into one studio, then another. Everywhere he is denied support of the previous site. And they propose to create a new, more sophisticated, better than before ...

But the originally created site completely satisfied the needs of the client. Just with the growing needs of the site need to develop and refine. For these purposes, and there is technical support, where the client can ask for help, consult or order improvements on the site.

Web studio support service

We are developing low-cost typical sites. Not template in the generally accepted understanding of the word, namely typical - individual solutions based on the standard technical model. Every month we release more than 35 sites for free navigation. Now in the portfolio of more than 500 projects, and every month their number is growing. Accordingly, the calculation of the number of calls to technical support, which must be worked out efficiently and in a timely manner. How does our support service work?

Technical support solves the following tasks:

• primary training of clients to work with the management system;
• Consultation of clients on working with the site management system after the delivery of the project;
• acceptance of functional improvements on the sites (coordination of the scope of work, clarification of the details of improvements on the sites, setting goals);
• work on the content support site (filling sites, posting news, writing texts);
• control of the sites hosted on the hosting server of partners.

The stability of our technical support is based on:

• hourly work on tasks
• the use of ticket system to account for calls to the support service,
• strict work regulations and application of the task setting system,
• simplified electronic document management.

But first things first.

Work on the clock

We work “on a clock” with all clients for support tasks.

How does the work on the clock:

• The client sends the information for posting on the site or suggestions for improvements of the functional.
• The details of improvements are discussed with the client, a preliminary assessment of the task in hours is made.
• After coordination of all details the task is put in work.
• The task is executed and the client is informed of the results.
• At the end of the month, the client is billed according to the time worked for all his tasks.

When concluding a contract, we additionally draw up an application in which there is a list of specialists and the cost of their services. Currently, the cost of an hour of work is the same for all specialists.

If the task is non-standard and it can be seen that it will take a lot of time, we first make an assessment of the work on the task and coordinate their scope with the customer. At the same time, we warn you that this is an approximate time of task completion and the real indicator may differ both upwards and downwards.

All our clients are accustomed to such a scheme. It is convenient for us and our customers. We know for sure that we will not fail with the assessment of the problem. It is convenient for customers that their tasks are immediately launched into work, without waiting for payment to arrive. Thus, many have transferred their sites to us under full control, periodically sending us information that needs to be placed on the sites.

Ticket system

When the flow of orders was not so large, one person coped with the analysis of letters of support. With the growth of production volumes, we realized that the number of calls will grow and one person will simply not be able to cope with such a load.

It was necessary to implement a system for recording customer support calls. The system had to meet the following requirements:

• preservation of the entire history of correspondence with clients on all appeals to support;
• interchangeability of technical support specialists - the possibility of replacing a manager who worked with a client (in case someone got sick or went on vacation);
• simultaneous work of several users in the system with different requests;
• web interface;
• the ability to deploy the system on your own server;
• the ability to customize the system for themselves;
• free of charge.

As a result, our choice fell on the OTRS system (Open-source Ticket Request System). This is a free open-source system that has Russification, a large manual with a description and configuration of settings in Russian.

The same product uses the company Mail.ru. About the organization of support services in Mail.ru can be read in this article .

To view the demo access to the system, please visit otrs.com .

Problems with the deployment and installation of the system have not arisen. The only thing is that the letters did not want to be sent to Mail.ru mailboxes for the first week, but everything was decided by setting up sending letters via Google SMTP.

The system has a number of templates for quick answers, which reduces the time for drafting a standard response to the client.

Support work regulations

There are several channels for requests for technical support:

• application by e-mail;
• phone call;
• request in the messenger (Skype, ICQ).

All tasks received from customers are fixed in OTRS. Applications sent to the support e-mail by e-mail automatically get into OTRS (once every 10 minutes they are automatically taken from the mailbox).

By phone or instant messenger, basically, we try to give the client only advice or quick answers to questions.

If a client makes any modifications by phone or instant messenger, we ask him to necessarily duplicate his application in writing to an electronic box so that he can better formulate his requirements or wishes.

Confirmation of receipt of the application, consideration and approval of the scope and cost of work occurs:

• on the same day, if the task arrived before 12:00 of the current day;
• the next business day before 12:00, if the task arrived after 12:00 of the current day.

If the sent letter contains all the necessary information for setting the task, then:

• the task is put into work through Redmine;
• In the task description, a ticket number is added (for example, Ticket # 2011120910000047);
• a letter is sent to the client that the task has been put to work;
• the application receives the status "Closed successfully";
• After completing the task, the ticket number is searched in the archives, and a notification is sent to the client about the successful completion of the task.

When you start working with an application, it is “blocked” (that is, it is assigned to the manager who started working with it) so that another manager does not happen to work with the same application at the same time. After the application has been answered, it closes, so as not to hang in the list of applications. If necessary, it can be easily found using advanced full-text search.

Following a clear work schedule allows you to easily introduce new employees to support or replace them.

Electronic document management

We issue invoices electronically. At the end of the month, Redmine makes a selection of projects for which work has been done to support the site, and summarizes the time spent on tasks, projects, clients.

Based on the hours worked billed. Invoices are sent to customers by e-mail as a link, by clicking on which, a client can open an account in any browser and print it.

findings

Studio support service should solve two problems:

• The first and most important is customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• The second task is to extract additional profits.

Thanks to the reorganization of the support system, we were able to bring support to our customers to a high level. Regardless of how long ago they made the site - a month ago or 3 years ago - they can always contact us, and we will help them or give advice.

Sincerely, Oleg Demyanov and the team web-canape.ru