Contact Support Best Practices

Purpose: 

The purpose of this article is to provide direction to Outreach Users in submitting support requests tickets to Outreach. 

When technical issues arise, it is important to submit a clear and detailed ticket to support to ensure a timely turnaround time. 

Intended Audience: 

• Outreach Users

Best Practices for Contacting Support: 

Research

Outreach has a vast library of information, not just limited to basic how-to articles but expanding to configuration, troubleshooting, and workflow success. Reviewing this content can provide information and direction to help address and prevent performance issues between Outreach and a CRM. 

Additionally, providing these steps to Support when submitting a ticket can help drill down to a root cause for a solution and avoid additional downtime. 

Use the Correct Communication Mediums

Outreach provides several avenues to stay in touch with Support. 
Chat (Plus/Enterprise Support Only) - Quick support channel to have simple functionality questions (i.e. can't add users to a sequence, etc.), and password resets. 
Support Request - Use this channel for more complicated support issues that require in-depth review and advanced troubleshooting practices. 

Note: Outreach supports an Email channel for similar issues outlined in Support Request; however, this communication channel will soon be deprecated.

Avoid Multiple Submissions

Outreach understands downtime can be frustrating and Support is here to help. In order to ensure accurate resolutions, Outreach tries to maintain a 1:1 ratio between a customer and a support agent, to minimize touch points and escalations. 

Communicating an issue to Outreach Support via one communication channel helps ensure that one agent will address your concerns and work to provide the best possible resolution. 

One Issue = One Ticket

To provide users with exceptional support, Outreach needs to be able to address one issue at a time per ticket. 

Tickets covering multiple issues can inadvertently delay identification of a root cause or solution to an issue as separate issues may share similar symptoms, but require different troubleshooting steps and work streams to address. 

For efficient and timely resolutions, submit only one issue per ticket. 

Crafting a Quality Support Ticket

Consider the following when submitting a support request to Outreach Support: 

Subject Line

Provide clear, brief, specific descriptions in your subject line. 

Example: 

• Choppy audio when calling a Prospect
• Email format not as expected
• Urgent: Multiple users unable to login to the platform, receiving error messages

Avoid over-generalized, uninformative subject lines. 

Example: 

• Help!
• Outreach isn't working
• Urgent: Need help

Description 

Descriptions should provide pertinent information to address your concerns. Providing detailed information in your support ticket can reduce the time an agent spends addressing your issue. Consider the following: 

• Behavior
  • When did the issue start? 
  • Is it constant or intermittent?
  • Does it only occur with a particular action? 
  • How should the experience occur (expected behavior)? 
• Affected users
• Related prospects
• Location in product where the issue occurs (web link)
• Reproduction/Troubleshooting steps
  • Include the troubleshooting steps performed prior to contacting support if applicable.
  • Include a link to the support article or training module used to address the issue prior to contacting support if applicable. 
• Relevant examples and screenshots if applicable 
• Explanation of business process if known
  • It helps for context to understand the business process and goals involved

Additional Resources: 

The Peak - Outreach Community 

Outreach University