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Created page with '== Background == If your product has as many users as Thunderbird and you get 80 new (or more! support topics per day through Get Satisfaction, then using the Get Satisfaction i…'
== Background ==
If your product has as many users as Thunderbird and you get 80 new (or more! support topics per day through Get Satisfaction, then using the Get Satisfaction interface "as is" is too slow. The GS web interface is great if you deal with less than 10 (in total! the amount of new topics, replies to old topics and comments Thunderbird receives is about 300/day) topics a day but it breaks down after that. Too much scrolling and clicking.
This page is an attempt to develop a spec for software (e.g. Firefox extension, Thunderbird extension, but it could be anything that accelerates support using Get Satisfaction)
I have asked for input from Other Get Satisfaction Community managers to develop this spec and welcome more! Please edit this page!
== Spec ==
== Deal with the 80% known first ==
=== Flag Duplicates ===
Most topics are duplicates of previous topics (guesstimate would be over 50%) so it would be great to have a way to easily and as quickly as possible:
# reply with some boilerplate text (e.g. "This is a duplicate of topic x, your problem is solved in topic x, please read the solution in topic x at the following link") and then
# close the topic (set to Answered or Solved)
# Auto-tag it with "duplicateofshorturl" e.g. "duplicate of http://gsfn.us/t/nr95"
=== Ask for missing information ===
Another 20% or so of our topics do not have enough information in the title and description to help the user. e.g. missing Thunderbird version, Operating system, mail provider, ISP, etc
So need a way to as quickly as possible
# reply with a boiler plate e.g. "The Community needs more information to help you. Please reply with your Thunderbird version, Operating system (Windows 7, Mac Leopard), ISP, incoming and outgoing mail settings etc"
# Edit the title to make sure it clear what the problem is (In Thunderbird's case, i.e. make sure the title has the Thunderbird version and Mail Provider and Operating System in the first few words i.e. Problem A with Mail Provider B with Thunderbird version C on Operating System D)
# Set the topic to Problem, Acknowledged (it's usually erroneously set to Question)
=== Split into sub topics ===
Finally about 10-20% of the time the user instead of creating a new topic, finds an existing topic which is NOT the right topic (e.g. cannot send email with Comcast) and adds their information to the old topic (e.g. cannot send email with AT&T Yahoo) and then once 1 user had done this then other users do this. So over a few days we have 3 or more off topic replies (some threads have over 60 :-( ! ).
Not sure how to speed up dealing with this. I think this is where ideally we would have the Get Satisfaction "close topic" or "split topic" feature
My approach to this is to formulate a "''super reply''"
i.e. one giant reply where I try to solve the original poster's problem and then for the off topic people, give them a brief i.e. 1 line solution and ask them to open a new topic if the 1 line solution doesn't work. And now that we have knowledge base (on a multi-lingual wiki not GS), I am also going to post a reply with links to relevant knowledge base articles.
Not sure how to design or spec this case for the accelerator other than perhaps having a way to quickly create the "super reply"
== Deal with the 20% unknown ==
# Reply to the topic (I hardly ever use comments because they are not 1st class citizens in the API, i.e. you cannot retrieve comments separately in the JSON API and the box is too little and you can't mark comments as "answering the question")
# Edit the title to make it more descriptive (unfortunately over 50% of the Thunderbird Topic Titles are not helpful e.g. "help", "ramblings" so I re-title to enable quick scanning of the titles from the management view or by normal GS users)
# Add tags so I can find it later (and so users can find it later via google or a GS search)
# Do a Moderator Update (usually set it to Answered or change to Problem, In Progress or Acknowledged)
== Implementation ==
The first implementation of this spec will be for Thunderbird, specifically, Roland Tanglao, because I simply don't have time to wait to get consensus and implement something that will work for everybody, i.e. I need this yesterday. It will be open source so feel free to enhance, modify and copy !
If your product has as many users as Thunderbird and you get 80 new (or more! support topics per day through Get Satisfaction, then using the Get Satisfaction interface "as is" is too slow. The GS web interface is great if you deal with less than 10 (in total! the amount of new topics, replies to old topics and comments Thunderbird receives is about 300/day) topics a day but it breaks down after that. Too much scrolling and clicking.
This page is an attempt to develop a spec for software (e.g. Firefox extension, Thunderbird extension, but it could be anything that accelerates support using Get Satisfaction)
I have asked for input from Other Get Satisfaction Community managers to develop this spec and welcome more! Please edit this page!
== Spec ==
== Deal with the 80% known first ==
=== Flag Duplicates ===
Most topics are duplicates of previous topics (guesstimate would be over 50%) so it would be great to have a way to easily and as quickly as possible:
# reply with some boilerplate text (e.g. "This is a duplicate of topic x, your problem is solved in topic x, please read the solution in topic x at the following link") and then
# close the topic (set to Answered or Solved)
# Auto-tag it with "duplicateofshorturl" e.g. "duplicate of http://gsfn.us/t/nr95"
=== Ask for missing information ===
Another 20% or so of our topics do not have enough information in the title and description to help the user. e.g. missing Thunderbird version, Operating system, mail provider, ISP, etc
So need a way to as quickly as possible
# reply with a boiler plate e.g. "The Community needs more information to help you. Please reply with your Thunderbird version, Operating system (Windows 7, Mac Leopard), ISP, incoming and outgoing mail settings etc"
# Edit the title to make sure it clear what the problem is (In Thunderbird's case, i.e. make sure the title has the Thunderbird version and Mail Provider and Operating System in the first few words i.e. Problem A with Mail Provider B with Thunderbird version C on Operating System D)
# Set the topic to Problem, Acknowledged (it's usually erroneously set to Question)
=== Split into sub topics ===
Finally about 10-20% of the time the user instead of creating a new topic, finds an existing topic which is NOT the right topic (e.g. cannot send email with Comcast) and adds their information to the old topic (e.g. cannot send email with AT&T Yahoo) and then once 1 user had done this then other users do this. So over a few days we have 3 or more off topic replies (some threads have over 60 :-( ! ).
Not sure how to speed up dealing with this. I think this is where ideally we would have the Get Satisfaction "close topic" or "split topic" feature
My approach to this is to formulate a "''super reply''"
i.e. one giant reply where I try to solve the original poster's problem and then for the off topic people, give them a brief i.e. 1 line solution and ask them to open a new topic if the 1 line solution doesn't work. And now that we have knowledge base (on a multi-lingual wiki not GS), I am also going to post a reply with links to relevant knowledge base articles.
Not sure how to design or spec this case for the accelerator other than perhaps having a way to quickly create the "super reply"
== Deal with the 20% unknown ==
# Reply to the topic (I hardly ever use comments because they are not 1st class citizens in the API, i.e. you cannot retrieve comments separately in the JSON API and the box is too little and you can't mark comments as "answering the question")
# Edit the title to make it more descriptive (unfortunately over 50% of the Thunderbird Topic Titles are not helpful e.g. "help", "ramblings" so I re-title to enable quick scanning of the titles from the management view or by normal GS users)
# Add tags so I can find it later (and so users can find it later via google or a GS search)
# Do a Moderator Update (usually set it to Answered or change to Problem, In Progress or Acknowledged)
== Implementation ==
The first implementation of this spec will be for Thunderbird, specifically, Roland Tanglao, because I simply don't have time to wait to get consensus and implement something that will work for everybody, i.e. I need this yesterday. It will be open source so feel free to enhance, modify and copy !
