Maybe everyone needs help sometimes. And that’s the case if you encounter some issues with a plugin or service, so in most cases, you need to contact their support team and patiently wait for an answer. SLAs define different terms to get a response, from minutes to days, but you can do a few things to speed up resolving your request. Check our tips below:
- The support team should be able to identify you. Especially if you submitted a ticket using an email address that completely differs from the one used to buy a license. Just add a few sentences to clarify who you are and the email used to buy a license for the service or plugin, order number, and any extra information that can be used to clarify who you are.
Example to follow: Hi! I’m John Doe from Software Technologies. We bought your Checkout extension (order number 12345 purchased by john@example.com), and we have the following issue…
- Make your request clear. It is crucial if you’re communicating using email or a ticketing system. Of course, you can submit a ticket with one sentence: “Hello, can I ask you a question?”, wait for a few hours, receive a response: “Yes, you’re welcome!” and then submit the question you have, but the same can be done right away. That allows you to save your time and get the answer as soon as possible.
Example to follow: Hi! Could you please let us know which version of your plugin can be installed on WooCommerce 5.2.0?
- Provide detailed information about the issue you have. For example, a clear step-by-step guide on reproducing the problem is very appreciated if that’s a bug. It is not difficult to compose. All you need to do is to describe actions to reproduce the issue one after another and add the information about the actual result and expected result in the end. Screenshots or short videos may also be helpful.
Example not to follow: Hi! Your plugin doesn’t launch! Help me!
It is a bad request because the support team doesn’t know anything about the issue. It may mean anything. For example, your server is down for maintenance; the plugin is misconfigured, the plugin is not installed (or installed improperly), and anything in between.
Example to follow: Hi! We can’t turn on the plugin. Steps to reproduce: go to Admin panel - Settings - Plugin settings, tick the “Activate” checkbox and save settings. Expected result: Plugin should launch. Actual result: the page reloads without any change. A screenshot is attached.
- Provide the access credentials if it may be needed. This may be very useful, especially if you can reproduce the issue on a dev site that contains only test configurations and no sensitive user data. Some problems require very specific conditions to be reproduced, so providing access to such an environment may be helpful, especially if the problem can be reproduced there almost constantly. The support team will start working on the issue right away instead of sending requests back and forth to get the access credentials and permissions.
- Do not clutter the support team email. Some issues may be really urgent and important, but it is recommended to avoid submitting a ticket every 10-15 minutes. You may think that it can speed up the reply, but in most cases, it just slows the process down. One of the reasons is that the support manager sees the multiple messages in the chain and needs to review all of them to find possible detail of the issue. Another reason is that sending numerous messages may trigger anti spam rules, and your email may be blacklisted even before a support manager sees a message.
So as you can see, there are some things that you can do to get the issue resolved faster.
