Pattern 3 - Update an existing job whenever a client responds to an email

Style: Update an exisitng job. A client has responded to an email that the helpdesk sent them. This pattern is one of the “must have” patterns to enable email automation.

Filter style: Subject keyword scanning.

Template use: A generic “Update” style Action template.

Visual Pattern:

Create specific emal templates for both staff and clients. Use Email Tags to give context and information.

Description:

One of the most common things to do at the helpdesk is to send an email back to the client to confirm their job number and the details of their support request. Client love this. It gives them validation, a job number and the sense that things are being looked after. It also gives them an easy way to contact the helpdesk again, and update their ticket. When clients reply to an email that was generated by the helpdesk, you can configure the Email Manager to “look for” these types of email and automatically update the corresponding helpdesk ticket with the details of the incoming email.

The incoming email will have the job number in the subject of the email - this is because the client is responding to an email that was originally sent by the helpdesk using an Email Template that was configured in this manner. The Email Manager will scan for this number so that it knows which job to update.

Note how the Action Template used to update the job will change the job status to “Helpdesk : Awaiting response”. The client has said something, and now the ball is in the helpdesk’s court….awaiting reply. Conversely, when the helpdesk replies, you can set the job status to something like “Client : Awaiting response”. The “Us and Them” status indicator can be very effective to determine where the responsibility for the next course of action lies.

The Action template will also send out 2 emails. One to the staff member that is assigned the job, the other back to the client, confirming that their email has just been received and processed.

The details of the email will be added to the job.

Extending the pattern:

This simple pattern can be extended via the use of better filtering, regular expressions, futher template modifiers (see pattern 1). For example, you could extend the filtering to look for words like “please close”, or “resolved”. If so, you could use a “Close job” action template that will set the Job Status to close. Extract only the portion of the email that you want. Use the powerful text parsing engine of the Email Manager to only extract the text that you want from the client email. There is a lot of power here.

Use integrations like NiceRepy etc on out-going email so that your clients can rate your responses.

Use HTML for your outgoing emails. Include hyperlinks to your web portal for self-service.

Use the multitude of Email tags available to personalize your Email Templates.

See Also

Pattern 4