New Support Request Form

“You need massive cajones to put that up!” I hear you say, but hear me out.

Firstly there is the obvious advantage of users realising that there is, in actual fact, documentation available that will assist them with simple things like this. Notice the inline help even at this point – some users might not use the documentation because they don’t know how to reach it.

You now have a compounded situation. If the user actually decides to click the submit button with a reason and the validation passes (140 characters minimum is probably a good bet) you really do have a problem – they did RTFM and got no answers. In this situation you have already solved your problem; you now know what areas of your documentation you need to address. The next customer who comes across this page with the same problem won’t be submitting a ticket.

You could always even provide a group of radio buttons so that the user has quick answers – and at the same time you will have data that can be graphed.

It is important to remember – you are not being rude at all. Referring to the documentation will mean that the turnaround time for an answer will be orders of magnitudes faster than relying on a limited amount of human resources.

Truth be told I tried GTD but I found that it stymied my productivity. I spent most of my time running around trying to GTD instead of GTD. I recently read an article on Havard Business that said you should have 3 ‘inboxes’:

• Follow Up – Stuff you need to follow up soon.
• Hold – Stuff you are waiting for.
• Archive – Important information you need to keep.

On top of that you should do quick responses immediately. It’s a great concept: but my email volume is too high for even that (I would spend my life sorting my inbox). I go for a slightly hybrid approach. I won’t be giving a click-through tutorial here: rather a broad overview.

1. Create a folder for Archive.
2. Create a folder for Pend (stuff that doesn’t fall under one of the others automatically).
3. If you have any existing filters keep them – only move the target under the appropriate folder (e.g. my “Source=Someone in the Company” folder is under Pend, mailing lists go under Archive).
4. Create two categories (Hold and Follow Up).
5. Assign hot-keys to the categories.
6. Create search folders for those categories.
7. Drop those search folders into your favourite folders.

You now have hot-keys for to categorise things and views for those categories.

Email becomes manageable again!