FAQ Solutions for Service Requests

[SJEaton]

Hi

We like the new feature that allows support staff to use a Service's FAQs in their customer's requests however we can't see the 'lightbulb' solution icon in our Service Requests. Is this only visible in Incidents???

Sam

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @SJEaton

Thanks for your post.  At the moment the solutions option (lightbulb) is only available for Incidents.  Our initial focus was to provide faster ways to resolve incidents through the use of Problem/Known Errors, and FAQs.  Problem and known errors tend to be more directed toward incidents, however I can see that an FAQ might be useful for a Service Request. 

Our initial view on Service Requests is that they are more of a ''I want something'' and not a ''something is broken''. Working through a Catalog Item would help capture information about the thing that they are asking for and a BPM to process or facilitate that request.  I would be interested in your use case for a FAQ that would be used by your support staff if that's ok?

Regards,

James

[SJEaton]

Hi James

I thought this would be the case, and I do agree with what you are saying about service requests. 

We were actually thinking about having FAQS that weren't for the customer but for the support staff to access via the request if they forget how to do something.  We are using Hornbill for our recruitment process and there are a number of human tasks that the request owners have to undertake throughout the process that we could give them assistance with via an FAQ.  But don't worry, it was just a thought and I can see how this isn't really what the feature is to be used for.

Sam

 

 

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Sam,

There are possibly some alternatives available.  If each Human Task has some specific items that need to be completed you might be able to use the Check Lists.  This will include a list of items that need to be completed as part of a particular Human Task.  The Assignee of the Human Task simple work through the checklist to compete their work.  This can be a nice simple way to give someone some guidance.

  

 

Another option can be using Document Manager to store your help files for your support staff and include a link in the Human Activity.  For example, in the Task Details you can wrap a URL within double square braces ([[http://yourURL.com]] to add a hyperlink.  If you also include a pipe (|) followed by some text, that text will will be displayed as the hyperlink.  In the example screenshot below, this will just show a hyperlink labelled 'Help'.

  

Let us know if that helps.

Regards,

James

 

[Henrik Brattlie, Manag-E]

This new knowledge feature is more than welcome and we like it a lot! A huzzah, is in order!

It is really good that we get suggestions from both Known Errors and FAQs. We also appreciate the fact that when you browse a solution, with pictures and all, you are still within the context of your request.

This is truly helpful for the agent. However there are two severe issues as far as I can tell.

Issue 1: videos does not show for the agent:

You have to know what is in this FAQ document to be able to use it, or you would have to log in to the service portal to view it.

Issue 2: all rich text, including images, is removed when you use "accept solution":
This makes the end users unhappy I would suspect. This is what the beautiful email-signature-FAQ looks like if it is presented to the end user (in portal or email):

I think it would be much better to present the end user with a link/reference to the FAQ-document and route them to the portal. This would present the solution as it is supposed to look with all formating, and allow for counting the views/uses. However, they should be able to accept/reject the FAQ as a solution, so the complete FAQ-document might need to be shown within the context of their request in the service portal. (Get in touch with me if I need to clarify this..)

Suggestions..

There is always room for improvement. Could the KEs/FAQ-documents be matched to categories and also text from the request, and not only linked to services? Would it be possible to sort the suggested solutions based on matching them with text in the requests and also usage count?

Again: this is a great new feature! Thanks!

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Henrik,

Thanks for your feedback on this feature.  We will definitely continue to improve and expand on the FAQs.  I agree about providing a link to the FAQ in the resolution rather than the content.  Some of the things you mentioned are already in our change backlog.  We will post back as these are scheduled and progressed.

Regards,

James