Newsletter - May 2008

Beanbasket Annonunces a New Enhanced Support System

   First, let me start this article by offering a sincere Thank You! to our customers and partners.  We appreciate and value your business and thanks to you we have grown because of it.  And, just as with your business, growth requires that you automate manual processes.  This particular article is about one of those change opportunities that will benefit both of us – a better support ticketing and management tool.
   The complex and evolving nature of e-commerce necessitates the use of a bug and enhancement tracking system to keep both Beanbasket and our client's up-to-date with the latest status of enhancements and bug fixes.  Please read below for critical information on both technical and procedural changes to Beanbasket Support.  As we roll this out, we do ask for your patience and understanding as we observe how this new workflow works for both us and our clients.  We will most likely have some bumps along the way.  However, deploying a system to help us manage all of our communications and tasks is critical to allowing us to provide better service and support as we continue to grow.

Beanbasket selected Jira for Help Desk management

After evaluating several options Beanbasket has selected Jira as the tool for Help Desk ticket management.  Jira provides us with three distinct benefits:  1) Allows Beanbasket staff and client's to see and work from the same issue list; 2) Acts as an information repository so that any notes regarding feature requests or bug reports are collected in one location for technical resolution and future reference; 3) Allows Beanbasket to have one, consolidated location and view for managing all efforts across all clients.

New Customer Support Procedures

A tool alone, however, does not make for a successful support strategy.  Support processes need to be in place for everyone to get the maximum benefit of such a Help Desk System.  It is with this in mind that we introduce the following Support procedures, which will benefit both Beanbasket and our clients:
•    As of Monday, May 19th, Support will no longer respond to requests submitted via e-mail to support@beanbasket.com.  All Support requests will need to be submitted via the Help Desk ticketing system.  This includes features requests, enhancement requests, questions, and bug reports.  We are currently working on getting all of our client's setup with a Beanbasket Help Desk account.  If you need to submit a ticket, but are not yet aware of your Help Desk account, please call Support at (920) 954-0807, option 1.
•    Only one issue is to be submitted per ticket.  Submitting multiple issues under one ticket negates part of the benefit of using a ticketing system (does not allow us to differentiate between elements of a request that can be handled quickly and those that will take additional time).  If a ticket is opened that includes multiple issues, you will be asked to create additional tickets detailing each specific element.
•    If an enhancement request is submitted, and we deem that the enhancement is going to take two hours or less, Beanbasket will perform and bill for the enhancement without any further approval.  The overhead of requiring a formal approval for efforts smaller than this end up consuming at least that amount of time.  This way we can cut out the busywork and provide the benefit in a shorter calendar timeframe.

Using the new Beanbasket Help Desk?

What can you expect when using the Beanbasket Help Desk?  What is the lifecycle of a ticket?
•    To submit and manage tickets, you will need to be logged in with your Help Desk username and password here:  http://helpdesk.beanbasket.com/jira/
•    Please open the ticket with the correct type and realistic priority.  This will help us to identify and properly prioritize our Support queue, which in the end, helps you.  Submit as much information as you can to help us more quickly determine the nature of the issue, scope, and possible resolution.  Including screen captures, order numbers, product ids, steps to recreate, or any other specific pieces of data are almost always required for a resolution.  If they are not entered originally, the resolution will be slowed as we ask for additional detail.
•    When opened, each ticket will be classified as 'Unassigned'.  Our first task is to identify the proper person within our organization that should react to the ticket.  New feature requests greater than two hours in time will get assigned to an Account Manager, system bugs may get assigned to Development, integration questions or issues will get assigned to the proper person within Support based upon the knowledge required for resolution.
•    Action on each ticket will be determined by the nature of the ticket and resolution.  A priority is placed on each ticket that is dependent upon a combination of resource availability, issue type (enhancement vs. bug), severity of bug, impact to client's sales, frequency of occurrence, all balanced against estimated resolution time.  For example, a bug preventing customers from checking out from Client A's website would be handled much differently than a situational bug that prevented the collection of an optional piece of data on Client B's website.  Our objective is to recognize that a ticket has been submitted by assigning it to an appropriate resource (person) within one business hour of being created.  Consider the assignment Beanbasket's way of acknowledging your ticket creation.  Business hours are defined as between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm central time.
•    The ticket will be the single collection point for follow-up questions, documenting resolution options, etc.  All communication regarding a ticket should be submitted through the ticket as a comment.
•    Upon resolution, Beanbasket support will mark the ticket resolved.  If the ticket is such that the client will need to approve the resolution (such as tickets that pertain to the site integration) we ask that the client comment on the resolution as to whether it is ready for migration from QA to production or if any additional modification will be needed.
•    The creation, resolution, and closure of tickets is a cooperative process between Beanbasket and our clients.  Once we have received approval and migrated a resolution to production, we ask that you close the ticket.  This allows you to confirm that the Beanbasket resolution has, in fact, resolved the issue.
•    In order to maintain the effectiveness of the system, we need to ensure that only active tickets that are of concern to the client are included in our Support queue.  With this in mind, we will be closing any ticket that we are actively engaged in, where Beanbasket has waited more than seven days for a client response.  This includes closing tickets that customer's have not closed after an install.

How do I start using Beanbasket Help Desk

How will I know what my login information is, and where to go to login?  When your Help Desk user account has been created, you will receive an e-mail similar to the one below with all of the details required for you to login.  As a rule of thumb, we recommend that you change your password once you have logged in for the first time.  The following is an example of what the e-mail will look like:

A JIRA account has been created for you at:
 
   http://helpdesk.beanbasket.com/jira
 
This is either because an administrator has created an account for you,
or because you have been assigned to an issue.
 
You can change your password here:
 
   http://helpdesk.beanbasket.com/jira/secure/ViewProfile.jspa
 
Here are the details of your account:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Username:
               Email:
           Full Name:
            Password:
(You can always retrieve these via the "Forgot Password" link on the signup page)
This action was initiated by Mike (mike@beanbasket.com).

Growing With You       

Again thank you for your business and your cooperation in implementing this change to our support procedures.  With your help we hope to make your support experience more responsive and more accurate.  And because you have the final say in closing issues, we want to continue to be accountable to you, our valued customers and partners.

We look forward to continuing to grow with you.

Beanbasket Support Team

 

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