Public Notes back in, by popular demand…
Last month, we updated Freshdesk with a fix in which we removed the confusion about whether agents should keep their notes “Private” within their team, or notify customers by using “Public” notes. We actually got rid of the public notes feature altogether and made all notes private by default.
Now following popular demand, WE ARE BRINGING BACK THE PUBLIC NOTES FEATURE.
Here’s why:
Sticky notes on the ticket
When customers shoot your helpdesk a query or complaint, there are a couple of ways your agents can respond. Most often, when they can directly answer the question, they just shoot a reply to the customer. Of course, sometimes it gets a little more complicated, and your agents might need to discuss between themselves. And sometimes, they just need to add a little more details to the conversation to add more context to other support agents in the team. In these situations, you don’t want your customer to see the internal conversations cooking in your support kitchen. Freshdesk allowed agents to add “NOTES” to a ticket for exactly this reason.
The Trouble with Making Notes Public
Till recently, when agents added a note to a ticket, they had an option to either keep it “Private”, showing it just to agents in the team, or “Public” making it visible to customers when they check their ticket status from the support portal. Notes were always private by default, but agents could simply “uncheck” the option and make a note visible to the customer. And that was a problem for more than a handful of businesses using Freshdesk. Agents habitually “unchecked” their notes, making their laundry basket visible to customers.
Plus in most use-cases agents would either need to keep the customers in the loop by sending them a reply, or add information for the support team by adding a private note. Since public notes were just doubling up as a reply, it did not really make sense to have that option floating around.
Public Notes Out, And Back In
Sometime last month, we rolled out an update in Freshdesk where we removed the public note feature altogether. All notes became strictly private, meaning agents could either directly talk to customers through “Replies”, or add internal communication through “Notes”.
And then, we met the third use-case
Some Freshdesk users were actually using public notes to give their customers non-invasive updates on their tickets. Customers could raise a ticket, and receive invasive emails from the support team only when agents needed additional information from them. But customers could check the status and see exactly what agents doing on their tickets anytime, from the company’s support portal.
That was a pretty good use-case, so as of today Public Notes are back in Freshdesk, by popular demand. With public notes, support teams on Freshdesk can be the UPS of customer support, by allowing customers to track what is happening in the tickets they raise any time, without bombarding them with email replies.
How to show customers you care, without spamming them with email, using Public Notes
1. Disable Requestor Email Notifications when agents add a note to a ticket
2. Encourage agents to add public notes, instead of replying to customers when they don’t need additional information, or change the status of a ticket
3. Ensure that the initial Email Notification sent to Requestor when a new ticket is submitted contains the link to the ticket in your support portal
4. Educate customers (in subsequent notifications and replies) about the ability to track status of their tickets from your support portal.
