How to communicate support issues

Here at Kilgray we do believe that good support is one of the cornerstones of our company, and we keep working hard to make it better and better.

One of the ways we're trying to improve our support without actually hiring half the world is by making the necessary communication as efficient as we can. It's not always working of course, as not all of our users are computer enthusiasts, on the other hand, even the most experienced support engineer tends to face user-created situations that are completely logical, yet unheard of.

However, a basic method can help you to speed up the support process, and save you from writing multiple mails just to describe the issue you are facing, so the investigation could start.

This method is: making your support report as detailed as you can.

As the only result of a "BIG ERROR?!!?" kind of mail is possibly a lot of wasted time we (as in you and us) have to spend just to figure out what's happening, the first thing you should do is indicate the urgency of your problem in the subject. This helps us to prioritize your case accordingly.

If you were in contact with us before, that issue got resolved, but something new comes up, please send us a new mail. There is a possibility that your mail will not get the appropriate attention because it has the old case’s subject.

When you report something, we will most likely attempt to reproduce it on our end, so if there is a chance, please try to tell us the exact steps you have taken, before the problem occured. There is also a chance that the issue you are having has already been fixed. Therefore, it is very useful to tell us your memoQ version (e.g. memoQ 2013 build 10). If you are working in an online project, the server’s version might be important too; if you are facing issues, always try to use the same version your customer is using.

If you have problems with importing, or exporting a document, or you’d like to have a specific filter for a certain file, we will likely ask for it, so you might as well attach an example file to your mail (and also the bilingual document).

Once your case is solved, it becomes a valuable piece of information in our system that might help solving someone else’s problem in the future. Because of this please don’t send us a mail with an attached document containing the actual explanation if possible. It is a waste of time and cannot be tracked. The traceability of this info is even more crucial in our bugtracking system, therefore it’s best if you copy and paste the error message from the error box, instead of sending a screenshot of it. Also, if there is a "More..." button on the error window, expand it, and copy and paste the whole message.

There are a lot of other tips for sending a well-written error report, but this is just a guideline – you should think of technical support like fixing a car through the phone or e-mails: the person on the other end will need as much detail as you can give in order to understand the problem and deal with it accordingly. Not to mention a good explanation might save you some odd questions as well (Have you tried turning it off and on again?).

Kilgray Translation Technologies

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