• Primary support will be completed by the end of the day for calls received.
• Verify eligibility of customers for support in Daylite. Customers with expired maintenance will be referred to the Sales & Marketing Department for further action.
• All support arrives via and will be documented using FogBugz. Support is linked to the email address of the client by entering that in the correspondent field before the next support item is taken.
• When you need to leave your desk and the support will be unattended, set your iChat status to 'away' with a reason or expected return time.
• Use online help web links where possible to provide assistance with responses. If there is no link or answer in an existing page, consider enhancing the page before answering the customer and then send the revised page link to the customer.

• To reduce further email requests for clarifications, provide all the details the first time. In other words, avoid off the cuff responses or a one-sentence replies that contains vague details.
• Do not respond with the 10% solution. If you do not know the answer, or are not 100% sure of an answer, investigate and verify how it works in Theatre Manager. Try not respond until you know the definitive answer.
• If a response will take some time, let the client know you are working on a solution.
• If a request for more information is required, provide the client on information and guidance the kind of information the support team needs to resolve their questions.
• Read the cases that have been closed in a day to see if you can learn something from them
• Use your team members, the online help, and Tier II as resources to resolve issues

Preliminary Procedures

Listen to the voice mail in quicktime and do the following with it:

• Determine the approximate customer requirement in the voice mail and put a synopsis in the FogBugz description field.
• Copy the phone number to the description field and/or alter it to math the voice mail. Sometimes the incoming phone number identified by the phone system is the customers switchboard
• Change the title of the voice mail to something meaningful indicating the topic area that the customer called about.
• Find the patron in Daylite and put their primary email address into the correspondent field
• If you think you know roughly what it might take to resolve the problem, place an estimate of time
• Assign it to support (generic), or a particular person on support that day.
• Assign a priority to it.
• Check to see if the customer also sent and email on the same subject and then link that incoming email case to the phone case
• Add the version number and computer OS to the boxes if known

Response Procedures

• When a problem is assigned to you, do any specialized research required on the problem so that you are ready to deal with the call. Call the customer back, or if the answer is explained directly in our support site, email the customer with the support link and then follow up in short order to discuss the email link.
• Generally, phone replies are for questions that we think can be answered in ten minutes or less.
• Anything requiring longer explanation should be scheduled for training and/or for a specific time period. If that is the case, contact the customer right away, explain that it is a probably long response requiring concentrated 'quiet' time and arrange an off peak or appropriate time that meet the needs of both the customer and Arts Management. Generally, mornings appear to be best.
• If the problem being reported is likely to take a long time and requires further research, advise the customer of the time you will get back to them with the probable answer.

• Will be replied to within 4 hours of when they come in.
• Will be replied with step-by-step guidelines to resolve their question.
• Will refer to web site links for information as much as possible (the goal is all requests for information and processes
• Faxes will be stored on the server and linked in Daylite to the ‘references’ pane.
• Email contacts will be entered and updated in Daylite so that a ‘white list’ of their names can be created for valid email filters to Arts Management’s Email system and sending announcements to users and knowing that the user will receive the announcement. When available, the following minimum information will be captured:
  • Email address
  • Full Name (first and last name)
  • Direct telephone numbers
  • Address
  • Position within the organization

The goal is that any question that could be answered more than once must be answered with reference to a web page so that procedures and processes are consistent throughout all support responses.

All staff members are responsible for:

• Identifying deficiencies and provide the updated corrections or improvements in manuals and support documentation.
• Monitoring Email responses and add to existing online support web pages where appropriate.
• Perform queries within online support web pages to bring up answers to questions and provide those links to clients within responses to their questions.

When a new venue comes on board or there is a staff change at an organization, the responsibility of the primary support team is to update Daylite with new contact information and/or correct some existing information at the start of the support process.

• All contact information will will be documented in DayLite and the contact associated with an organization. This means names and addresses for all contacts. There is a 'grab' button to get the primary organization address to simplify data entry.
• Please check with Daylite to confirm the version number that the venue is using to transfer to FogBugz support tracking.
• If somebody leaves an organization, please mark there relationship as 'former employee' and the description as 'former xxxxxxx' - daylite.

General Philosophy

• Customers are our best source of continuing business and new referrals. They are to be treated with courtesy and respect at all times.
• All clients are to be treated as equal and will get complete detailed explanations. This is to avoid the cases where some clients who are friendly get chatty responses; some clients get terse responses; some clients get no responses.
• Have the client assist in duplicating problems that they bring to our attention. Once a problem can be duplicated, or we have received the steps to create the problem, a resolution can be determined.

Time Consuming Issues

Some issues will consume an inordinate amount of time and may or may not be chargeable back to the customers if they are asking us to do something that ordinarily they should be doing. Since the primary purpose of support is provide 'how to' answers, and most of these fall into 'do it for them', you may have to confirm with sales if is it to be charged back or not.

In all cases, time consuming issues are to be done after primary support items are dealt with unless given as a special project.

Examples are:

• Ticket face coding will be completed during non-busy support times.
• System balancing will be completed during non-busy support times.
• Building a new venue map is generally a special project
• Season subscription setup/training will be completed during non-busy support times. This process may take 1 to 2 hours, so a block of time needs to be set aside.
• Web support will be completed during non-busy support times - unless it is an emergency and sales will not work

• Training and demo sessions are all to be pre-arrange and handled through the Sales & Marketing Department.
• Telephone training/demo sessions will be completed during a scheduled time when there is secondary support available to handle the calls or during a non-busy support time. This process may take 1 to 2 hours, so a block of time needs to be set aside. Between the hours of 8:00AM to 10:00AM if possible.
• Limit the number of training, demos or setup sessions scheduled for Wednesday’s. This is the support’s heaviest day of the week.
• Always check to see who else is available to provide primary support when a phone training session is planned and keep the team informed of status via iChat 'status' (eg 'training customer' or 'phone demo', etc.)

Prior to leaving the office, there is to be a turn-over process.

• Examine all your existing cases that are in progress.
• Discuss them with a team member and assign a case to somebody else with their permission.
• Repeat for all cases currently in your bailiwick prior to departure.
• the expectation is that all cases can be reassigned to someone else
• If there is a complicated case and you choose to keep it, then you are expected to follow that case until it is done. That means, while at a customer site, to complete that case after hours. Or, if on vacation, to deal with the case on an ongoing basis to continue to provide excellent customer service.

Remember: complete or turn over all cases prior to going on a protracted leave and advise your team of any peculiarities on the case

• Ask the customer to activate the remote access session
• Ask them to provide you the number and password for remote access the session
• Connect to their work station
• Ask the customer to confirm our identity by providing them their customer number and having them look it up in 'about Theatre Manager' or providing the case number that they received from us that initiated the need for report support session (PCI requirement for authentication)
• As part of the pre-amble, inform them how they can disconnect you immediately if there should be anything come on the screen that they feel you should not see or is private.
• Provide the appropriate support
• When the support all is finished, have the client disconnect you and have them acknowledge you are gone
• Do not leave a session active when you are done. If need be, close the session on their end to force you out.

• Log into Daylite
• Log into FogBugz and review your cases from the prior day
• Listen to and prioritize all Voice Messages that came in since the close of support the previous day. This is to be done first thing in the morning before any other support is commenced
• Prioritize all existing and new cases

Be there ready to begin support at 8:00AM. Not 8:15AM, not 8:25AM.

• Call back clients that have purchased after hours support. Their organization account has ‘911/After Hours Support’ in the Groups Classification tab in Daylite.
• Send emails to clients who call outside support hours that indicated the regular support hours. Also, answer their question if you can by email with a web help link to get them started.
• Check all existing cases for any further customer replies and deal with those first. It is especially important for cases 'waiting for customer response' or those assigned to second level support.
• respond to clients in priority order

• Re prioritize all existing cases, especially those whose system is down versus common questions
• Prioritize by East coast versus West coast and answer the East coast first.
• Need to be careful not to postpone a critical support issue, with an incoming phone call for training or help style question. Let the client know that we will get back to them as soon as practical. Complete the critical support issue.

• Evaluate the voice mail for priority
• Respond according to priority
• Converse with second level support if an item appears to require Tier II support and assign appropriately
• Record contact changes in Daylite
• Adjust web pages as required to provide clearer answers

Those on the easy coast might start a little earlier if arranged with management and support volume warrants it.

By around 4:30, we need to start the process of closing the support day - and at the same time deal with ongoing incoming requests. Above all, we want to make sure that we meet the overall goals of responding to voice mail within 1 hour/same business day and email within 4 hours.

Near the close of day, re-prioritize all support. At this time, the general expectations before closing up for the night are:

• All outstanding voice messages will have been replied to
• All emails and faxes that arrived prior to mid afternoon will have been replied to.
• Very late incoming emails will be answered is possible, and if not left for the next day. Since all emails are auto-responded, the customer should have received confirmation that we received it and replying is not necessary
• All new customer contact information that you received during that dat has been updated in daylite. Normally, there may be one or two people, so the volume is not high
• at 5:00pm, check for voice messages one last time

Some factors to consider when altering priority of support requests are below. If more than one applies, accumulate the effect. For example if a customer calls twice, is on after hours, and says that they cannot sell a ticket, then that is +5+5+10 -> so that makes it high priority