It seems like all web hosting companies use trouble tickets instead of email. Why is this? Is it so things are logged?

Yes

Logging is very important to enable you and the customer to remember what has gone on previously with the fault.

This gets more important as the number of customers you have goes up.

ok, thanks for confirmation

Having a ticket system allows multiple people to address problems/questions that your clients have. It is also a GREAT way to see any outstanding requests that you have. You can have all of your emails pipe to a ticket system, and see which ones you've replied to and which ones are still pending. With Outlook or common email clients, it's easy to miss a request. With a ticket system you can always "close" the request when you're done, and you won't have any neglected customers.

Originally posted by boardr00
It seems like all web hosting companies use trouble tickets instead of email. Why is this? Is it so things are logged?

I am unsure as to what you mean by tickets instead of email, but here's my take.

"Trouble Ticket" scripts such as eSupport/Perldesk/Helpdesk Pro etc are used by web hosts for many reasons. Here are 3 of them.

1. Emails/tickets and their responses can be easily tracked as sometimes mail programs don't reply with the entire message. A technican who could be dealing with hundreds of tickets a day can't possibly be expected to remember what joe said yesterday. Therefore, with a ticket system, everything is nicely laid out with all the responses intact.

2. A trouble ticket system also aids in allowing different individuals handle a ticket which another person could have been dealing with earlier. Again, all the responses will be logged and the technican would be able to easily follow what the issue is.

3. At times when a client's email account is not functioning for whatever reason - server down, loss password etc - that person can still communicate with the web host via the ticket system by logging on to it.

Don't forget about case routing and escalation. Let's say you have a DNS expert on staff. On your ticket form, you can have a drop-down list of 'issue types', i.e. 'DNS help'. Then, when the ticket is submitted, it is routed to the proper rep. Also, a ticket system lets a rep escalate an issue to the next 'level' of support if they can't figure it out. If one is using just e-mail, it would have to be forwarded to one (or more) specific reps. With escalation, it's added into the 'queue' for the 'level 2' support group. E-mail just isn't designed for this type of granular control.

One main reason is that all tickets are located in one place. Where as, emails can come from just about anywhere.

If a customer is away on vacation, but remembered you answered that ticket on how to get into his control panel through a ticket, he can check it through the ticketing system. If it was on email, it'll be back home and whatnot sitting in his email client. Just an example, but that's one advantage the ticketing system has over just email.

It's generally useful if the company have more than one staff. You can also ensure that you don't have 2 person or more answering the same issue.

It also allows things such as paging technicians for high priority tickets. The multiple users being able to access the same tickets is probably the most important though.

It looks farily sophisticated to the end user aswell :)

For us, it allows us to easily track and deal with issues.

The one benefit of the logging that nobody has brought up is the Knowledgebase.

By tracking tickets and the information in them it allows you to expand and grow your knowledgebase/FAQ's based off the questions your customers ask.

It allows you to create a more customized system based of your customers.

2 words, "audit trail"

Heres why:

I'm currently "In between" ticketing systems and I'm going nuts. Emails are going everywhere and, although they are all getting responded to... I like to monitor the conversations between my staff and customers.

Tickets are also alot easier to manage then emails. With emails spread out everywhere, you can easily forget what is going on and staff can get confused on who has replied and who hasn't. With a ticket, everything is organized into it's own section, staff can see who has replied and who hasn't, etc...

Because you will get tired of constantly wasting time with e-mails like this -

"My e-mail is not working. Fix it.

John."

Isn't that the truth. Try responding to an email "my email isn't working" and the reply to address is the email that isn't working. LOL

Only downfall I think is that if your ticket system is on a server that goes down your support is down.

Best thing would be to have the database on a remote server and more than 1 interface DNS pointing to it. Because using email wouldn't have this problem (as its easy to have mail on any of your servers when one is down).

Regards.

thank you I needed an answer also

The problem arises when customer insists on using the email especially after getting used to the pre-sales email support. Sometimes it takes me 3 attempts to convince them to use the Helpdesk. Eventually, they use it.