The Power of Status Alerts

Jim Cuoco,
CTO, Support Fusion, Inc.

Status Alerts have been a feature in our system for quite some time now, but some cutomers are still not taking full advantage of them. For those of you unfamiliar with Status Alerts, let me give you a quick summary. For every status defined in the system you can create a Status Alert. When active this alert will be triggered when the status of an issue is set to that status. The author of the Status Alert can define when the first and subsequent alerts will be sent, how many will be sent, who they will be sent to, and what will trigger them being sent while the issue remains in that particular status.

I am not going to get into the details of how to setup Status Alerts in this article, but rather why they should be set up. For example, we have a customer that currently uses Status Alerts to query their customers on their support experience. They have set up a Status Alert on the Issue Closed status that sends an email to the customer one day after an issue has been closed. In the email there is a link to a survey on their web site that the customer can fill out. This information provides them with the data they need to assess the effectiveness of their support staff.

Status Alerts can also be placed on statuses that are customer based. Meaning if a customer places in activity in an issue and that activity is set up to change the status of the issue (another topic to be discussed), then a Status Alert on that status can be set up to email the representative at regular intervals reminding them to get back to this customer.

Status Alerts can also be used to notify supervisor when an issue is set to a specific status and notify department heads based on an issue being placed in a specific status and so on.

In the end, the ability to notify different people inside and outside of your company, in a format you define, based simply on the change of status (again which you define) is a very powerful of tool for sharing information.

Jim Cuoco
Email: jcuoco@supportfusion.com
Comany: Support Fusion Inc.
Blog: From the Desks of Support Fusion