Question

Ticketing System?

  • 27 July 2022
  • 7 replies
  • 221 views

Userlevel 2

I know the idea of Karbon is that everyone “owns” their email/tasks, but I have got to get out of everyone emailing me as the head of the company. I am going to explore ticketing systems, so I am curious to see if anyone is using those and how they can work with Karbon. I have a list of websites to check out, but I will prioritize a system that someone already is using with Karbon. 

 

I like Karbon for the workflow, so hoping to find something that works with it, so I don’t have to switch to a whole new system and recreate everything.


7 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +5

We have an policy that we don’t send emails internally. The only time I’d do this is when sending an email to a client and introducing a team member.

 

All internal correspondence is communicated by the messages or notes. And the beauty here is that if a whole conversation starts within the team, I can switch the notifications off.

 

We don’t use a ticketing system or anything like that -so can’t help there, but I thought you may be interested in a different way of working instead?

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hi @Stephanie, welcome to the Karbon community. 😀

We had a similar situation with our managing partner. I don’t know if this will help you, but here’s how we handled it:

  • Added a shared inbox (office 365) called something like office@ourfirm.com
    • Karbon can add this as a “send from” for whomever you would like
    • There’s a setting in outlook to include the group email in your regular inbox, so that the emails flow to the team members
    • This creates a copy of the email in the triage for all team members, and if one person comments on the email, it shows up in all triages
  • Our office manager and her staff send all emails out from that email address
    • This started to get the clients to reply and keep communication in the proper channels by default
    • Clients started to learn that they could get good and quick service through our office instead of sending communication to the managing partner
  • Our managing partner started redirecting incoming emails to the proper staff by replying to the client that and copying the appropriate staff member
    • This extended the trust clients have in our managing partner to the staff
    • Clients started communicating through the proper channels

Karbon is also adding shared mailbox support, which could be used like a ticketing system.

Does that help at all?

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Stephanie by “everyone” do you mean external clients or the internal team? It sounds like both @max and @Coral have given suggestions for either side! Here’s what we do at our firm:

 

For external clients:

  • We have a few centralized email accounts for different purposes - they aren’t shared inboxes in the way Max has, but full email accounts.
  • These have Karbon logins and are managed from within Karbon. Generally, each account is owned by a different person.
  • Client tasks are sent from these accounts, and clients should always cc this account when emailing directly.
  • If the CEO or someone else senior (i.e. not their regular bookkeeper/accountant) then receives an email from a client, it generally means they’re unhappy (or really happy)!
  • When we moved to this system, we sent out a notification newsletter to all our existing clients.

For internal team:

  • As with Coral, we try and minimize internal emails as much as possible (although I’m pretty sure it still happens).
  • Internal emails tend to be for announcements or more serious internal matters.
  • For any process change requests/suggestions etc., we use Karbon as a ticketing system!
    • We have a work type specifically for process changes
    • If anyone needs a process changed for a client (e.g. they tell us they are now using Stripe and we need access/processes) or sometimes an internal process, a work item is created with this work type with relevant details
    • All of these work items are assigned to the same person, who then either actions them or reassigns to the appropriate person as necessary
  • We also use Slack extensively, so questions likely just end up there instead of email!

For technology support:

  • We use Zoho for tech support tickets.
  • For a user raising tickets it’s pretty simple - we just send an email, CC anyone we need to, and can tag to a timeline if need be.
    • There is a site we can login to to raise and check the status of tickets as well, but I don’t know anyone who actually uses it!
  • For the tech team though, this is managed entirely outside of Karbon. Our tech support have Karbon accounts (for admin support) but aren’t using it as their email client or to do any work.
Userlevel 2

Thank you for these replies! By "everyone," I meant external clients. We are pretty good about using Comments internally to discuss amongst ourselves. 

I am going out of town today for the weekend and worry about someone emailing me directly with something important and no one seeing it until Sunday. I have a vacation responder on, asking them to contact one of my team members if it's something urgent that can't wait, but you never know!

I also worry about requests that are not built into work (or client requests) being lost in the shuffle. As an example, if I send a client a request for something and assume they will get back to me, but realize a week later I haven't heard back. I guess now that I am describing it, I should probably just create a work item for this request so I'll see it's Waiting for Client? 

Maybe that is the issue... We generally only set up Work for recurring tasks, not one-offs. Open to ideas/suggestions!

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Maybe that is the issue... We generally only set up Work for recurring tasks, not one-offs. Open to ideas/suggestions!

I think work items for these other requests (that are not quick solves/replies!) could help!

  • It will help organize the requests to make it easier to keep related information together
  • You could initiate the request using a client task, but send it on behalf of someone else (e.g. the person who will ultimately do the work, or like now if you were going away you could send it from a team member)
  • With the new portal, a client will see all the outstanding requests across all work items so it will make it easier for them to track what they have/haven’t done
  • You can set reminders to automatically go out if they don’t reply
  • For client initiated conversations/requests, you could then tag it to a new piece of work and have statuses to track

The team triage feature when it is released should help with this as well - from what I understand, you’ll be able to delegate your triage to someone in the team when you go away (for example)!

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

I am going out of town today for the weekend and worry about someone emailing me directly with something important and no one seeing it until Sunday. I have a vacation responder on, asking them to contact one of my team members if it's something urgent that can't wait, but you never know!

If you have email sharing turned on, your staff can see the timelines and new emails in Karbon even if you don’t forward or assign them. One option you could try is to have your staff periodically check certain clients’ (those specific, high profile clients) timelines for new email and handle accordingly.

In a future Karbon release, you’ll be able to delegate your triage to someone else, which will virtually solve this problem for you. 😀

I also worry about requests that are not built into work (or client requests) being lost in the shuffle. As an example, if I send a client a request for something and assume they will get back to me, but realize a week later I haven't heard back. I guess now that I am describing it, I should probably just create a work item for this request so I'll see it's Waiting for Client? 

We have a template called Secure Document Transfer that we use for one-off client requests.

Maybe that is the issue... We generally only set up Work for recurring tasks, not one-offs. Open to ideas/suggestions!

We have a rule at our firm that if any of the following things are true, a work item gets created to track the work:

  • The work cannot be done in one sitting by one person
  • More than one person involved at our firm (prep → Review)
  • The client needs to provide more documentation or confirm information
  • We are billing time and material for the work

I don’t know if that helps. 😀

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Thank you for these replies! By "everyone," I meant external clients. We are pretty good about using Comments internally to discuss amongst ourselves. 

I am going out of town today for the weekend and worry about someone emailing me directly with something important and no one seeing it until Sunday. I have a vacation responder on, asking them to contact one of my team members if it's something urgent that can't wait, but you never know!

I also worry about requests that are not built into work (or client requests) being lost in the shuffle. As an example, if I send a client a request for something and assume they will get back to me, but realize a week later I haven't heard back. I guess now that I am describing it, I should probably just create a work item for this request so I'll see it's Waiting for Client? 

Maybe that is the issue... We generally only set up Work for recurring tasks, not one-offs. Open to ideas/suggestions!

 

Without creating a work Item, you can assign the email to yourself of a colleague and set a to-do and do date so that you can clear the email from your triage but not lose it for good. Instead, you can navigate to your My Week or ToDo list and see it there. 

 

Our firm is pretty good about doing this for follow ups, if the client hasn’t replied by the “due date” we know it’s time to ask again. 

 

This might not help exactly with what you need, but is a step to a less intimidating triage. 

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