Case closed emails

We use the following workflow: 

• (Automation) reminder to the customer once the ticket has been pending customer response for 3 business days. ("We're awaiting your response.")
• (Automation) reminder to the customer once the ticket has been pending customer response for 5 business days ("If we don't receive a response within 2 days, we'll close your ticket.")
• (Automation) Solve the ticket once the ticket has been pending customer response for 7 business days.
• (Trigger) Notification to the requester that their case was solved (includes a note stating "To reopen this request, just reply to this email.")
• (Automation) CSAT survey sent after the ticket has been in Solved status for 48 hours.

Whether you choose to remind and/or notify requesters depends on your business, the complexity of the cases your support team handles, and your customer base. There's really no objectively right or wrong way to do it.

In my experience, requesters can become upset if they feel they weren't warned prior to a ticket being closed; without these friendly warnings, you can see many more negative CSAT surveys from customers with comments like "you never solved my problem." 

Sending reminders and/or "case solved" notifications gives the requester an opportunity to re-open the case if needed prior to receiving a CSAT survey, which increases the likelihood that only customers who feel their case was handled fully end up taking your survey.

Thank you @harper11! Did you ever receive CSATs saying that the case wasn't properly resolved with the 'Case Closed' email? Just wondering if you felt user sentiment ever hurt more with both a CSAT and 'Case Closed' email than just delivering a CSAT email for other reasons? For example, the user maybe would sense that the 'Case Closed' would be an indicator that the support team is no longer paying attention to the case, whereas the CSAT could still come across as just hearing feedback from the support experience, whether the user views the case as closed or not? I really appreciate the insight and, yeah, these small decisions do impact user sentiment some. I like your other triggered emails too!

Hey Deke, we typically don't use an auto email for closed B2C cases. Agents indicate to customers how they can get back in touch as part of normal communication when replying to emails. They do then get the CSAT when the trigger runs after the ticket is solved which we find tends to prompt customers to get back to us if they feel they need more support. 

I think it would depend on your use case and if you expect customers to need more ongoing support rather than one-off transactional support from your team. 

I would also not recommend sending an information about setting tickets to the status closed. Limitation of messages and the focus on the important things is my "religion". :-)

In fact, I would only take an email message for triage functions into consideration. Just sending an email in order to inform a special department about the negative or very negative sentiment.

Regards,

Stephan

Did you ever receive CSATs saying that the case wasn't properly resolved with the 'Case Closed' email?

Not often. By the time the requester gets the CSAT email, they've already failed to answer 4 other messages (agent's original request, 3-day follow-up, 5-day follow-up, 7-day solved notice) and they've had a grand total of 9 days to answer us on their case (as the CSAT isn't sent until 2 days after solve).

There's always going to be that occasional unreasonable person who blames you no matter what you do, but I don't lose any sleep over those.

Additionally, our "case solved" notification explains that by simply responding to the message, they can re-open the case. That prevents unnecessary melodrama over tickets getting solved. :)

Hey @Deke Marquardt -

I agree with the above.  From our experience, the recommended best practice is to have either...

a) the agent provide the final public comment and mark the ticket as solved, followed by a c-sat survey, or

b) the automation alerting them that the case is now considered resolved due to lack of response, marking the ticket as solved (no c-sat survey). 

In either event, another 'case closed' email is generally just viewed as noise in the customer's inbox.  Hope this helps!

Brandon

Hey @Deke Marquardt

We use automation for pending tickets of 3 days and 6 days with trigger emails sent to the customer saying that we are waiting to hear back from them and if they don't respond the ticket will be closed within 9 days.

After the ticket is closed, the customer gets a trigger email saying that the ticket is now closed but if you respond to it will re-open.

Additionally, we send a CSAT survey after the ticket has been closed which is working well for us as we have a minimum standard of 85% CSAT across the team and we are currently achieving it.

Hope this helps you. Thanks!

Hey @Deke Marquardt - looks like you have had quite a few other responses, and we follow the same reminder email that others have mentioned. I think the difference for us, is we have combined the closure email and CSAT.

So our format is like this if we have no response:

• (Automation) reminder once the ticket has been pending status for 3 business days.
• (Automation) a second reminder once the ticket has been pending an additional 3 business days.
• (Automation) move the ticket to solved after another 3 business days if no response.
• (Trigger) Email to the requester that their ticket was solved, no CSAT requested.

Our format if we do get a response:

• The agent moved the ticket to solved status.
• (Trigger) email sent confirming the ticket is solved, including the most recent public comment and CSAT.

Hi Deke Marquardt, it is important that your customer should get notify about their ticket updates (resolved, pending, closed) and CSAT mail is also important to know your customer satisfaction so that you can improve your service. CSAT is the best single KPI for measuring the quality of the service provided and tracking how your team is performing.

Thanks