Reasons to choose Absolute as your support partner

Experience & Expertise

Firstly, it's important to have a team of knowledgeable and empathetic support staff who are dedicated to resolving customer issues quickly and efficiently. Providing ongoing training and development opportunities for you and your team can help stay up-to-date with the latest product updates and best practices.

Accurate Estimates

We also feel it's important to be accurate with estimates, giving clients a realistic evaluation of what’s needed, or if the issue is one that is not familiar, we ask for an hour to investigate it, so that we can then raise an estimate for approval. In this way clients can more effectively manage their monthly budgets.

We always suggest starting with a realistic monthly plan of hours, which can then be topped up if the amount of work in a month exceeds this agreed level. We also allow for any unused hours in a month to be rolled over for up to two months / ending in a given quarter, to help ensure a client gets the full value from their support plan. 

Task Escalation

Sometimes a more complex task will take more than a day to resolve. In this case we suggest this task is treated as a mini project, with its own unique job reference. This may mean day-to-day communications are passed onto a Project Manager from our projects team, who would be responsible for overseeing the project and ensuring that it is completed successfully. We also operate a blended agency rate meaning you do not pay extra for tickets to be escalated to our most senior developers if a task is sufficiently complex to warrant this. 

Communication

In addition to having a great support team, it's important to offer multiple channels of communication, such as email, phone, and regular meetings/video calls. This ensures that customers can reach out for help in the way that is most convenient for them.

In the first instance, we ask that all support requests are submitted via our ticketing system, with the following benefits being delivered to our clients:

Improved organisation and tracking
With a ticketing system, each customer inquiry is assigned a unique ticket number that can be used to track and monitor the status of the inquiry. This allows support staff to easily prioritise and manage their workload, and ensures that no inquiry falls through the cracks.

Better collaboration
A ticketing system can facilitate collaboration among support staff, as multiple team members can view and work on the same ticket. This can help to speed up resolution times and ensure that customers receive accurate and consistent responses.

Increased efficiency
By automating certain tasks, such as ticket assignment and escalation, a ticketing system can help support staff to work more efficiently and effectively. This can help to reduce response times and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Accurate information = rapid resolution

Clients can help ensure a speedy ticket response by supplying the following information:

• Including the affected URLS if an issue is present on specific pages. 
• Providing screenshots of issues/errors 
• Prodiving screen recordings or using a tool that records sessions
• Be clear on the requirements, or let us know if you want a call to go into more detail and talk things through. 
• Let us know the reasons for requesting specific functionality, this will allow us to understand the business requirements and be able to advise more accurately.
• Create a storage space to help save any attachments, documents, training guides, testing documents to refer to when raising tickets if needed.

Recommended tools 

Onetimesecret
This is a way to share sensitive information without storing them. If you use a one-time link instead, the information persists for a single viewing which means it can't be read by someone else later. This allows you to send sensitive information in a safe way knowing it's seen by one person only.

Microsoft Clarity
is a user behaviour and website debugging analytics tool unlike any other. What Clarity does is provide insights into how users interact with the site.

Vidyard
is a screen recording tool that can sit on your browser as an extension and allow you to record your screen, personalise the recording and share it via a link. 

WeTranfer
is a free tool that can be used to send large files across that are not sensitive/confidential that cannot be attached to the tickets. 

Lastpass/Keepass
Using a password manager to store your sensitive information that is related to the site such as admin access, module account access, payment provider access and many more.  

Summary - The Benefits of Absolute’s Support service 

• Dedicated Account Manager 
• Support Retainer that is suited to you as a client
• Regular Meetings via Teams 
• Ticketing system
• Access to senior developers at no additional cost 
• Strategy meetings 
• Consultancy services
• Third party advice/collaboration