Most of us are familiar with the deli counter at our favorite supermarket. More often than not, the staff has far more customers to attend to than staff to serve them, so what do you do? You take a number and wait for your turn. When your time comes, you have only a few fleeting seconds to bark out your order before the person you speak to disappears, only to reappear with your items before moving on to the next person.
Sometimes reaching out to our favorite vendors and service providers can feel the same way. We visit their site, enter our information into a form, and wait for our turn. In the age of COVID, companies need to connect with their customers as much as ever, maybe more. The question is how – especially when in-person contact has been severely limited. Due to the rise of remote workspaces and communication silos, companies are embracing conversational ticketing to provide real-time support and bridge the gap between their agents and customers.
What is Conversational Ticketing, you ask?
Conversational ticketing is real-time support provided by a support agent to a customer, conducted via a communication platform, such as Slack, or in this case, Intercom. Conversational Ticketing brings that human connection back, making support feel less like a hassle on all sides.
Atlassian recognized the benefits of conversational ticketing long ago, acquiring Halp in 2020 to build an integrated help desk ticketing system and automated answers inside Slack. Halp is a modern, lightweight help desk that lets you create and manage requests directly in Slack and Teams. Due to Atlassian’s acquisition and inclusion in its world-class suite of productivity tools, it’s no wonder that Halp is becoming synonymous with Conversational Ticketing.
The Benefits of Intercom
While it is a fantastic tool, Halp is not THE conversational ticketing solution for every situation. Halp works wonderfully for internal support – for teams with a shared set of tools with common access. Modern DevOps teams rely on messaging apps like Slack to communicate and get work done. For many, a messaging platform like Slack is the backbone of their collaboration culture, so the more they can stay in the app instead of switching over to email or other tools, the more they can stay in a state of flow. No context-switching, no prompts to log in, and for their IT teams, no additional maintenance. The adoption of messaging platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams has led many to believe EVERYONE is using one or both of these tools… but are they? And even if your customers are using a messaging platform, are they connected to YOUR workspace? Probably not – and that would be a requirement for them to use Halp to interact with your agents.
At Addteq, we wanted a world-class conversational ticketing solution that did NOT require installing any software or connections to our internal resources, nor did we want to reinvent the wheel by layering another ticketing system on top of our existing ticketing system. Redundant layers may work very well for birthday cakes, but not for providing immediate support to our customers.
When a customer visits Addteq.com and has a question, they need only click on the Intercom badge at the lower right corner.
Clicking on the badge, the customer has a chat window they can immediately use to interact with a member of our support team. When someone initiates a chat session by entering a question or comment, we ask for their name and email address to better serve them. Having this information allows us to address our customers properly while ensuring we have a way of staying in touch if communications are interrupted.
Immediately after receiving a message, a support team member will reach out to you with a response. If we can provide you with an answer on the spot, you will receive it right then. In some cases, we will need to take your information and bring it to the attention of others in our team. In that case, we will create a Jira issue on behalf of our customer!
Once we have captured the correct information, we can create an issue in Jira Cloud and link the conversation to the Jira issue, instantly seeing the conversation and user details next to our Jira issue, ensuring no data is left behind.
Migrating from Server to Cloud?
In general, the pressure to move from on-premises infrastructure to the Cloud has been building in recent years for a long time, especially for Atlassian Server customers. As part of its mission to become a cloud-first organization, Atlassian will be altogether discontinuing support for its server products in early 2024. You may remember a commercial whose tagline was “I’m not only the president, but I’m also a client” – at Addteq, we aren’t just a top 5 Platinum Solutions partner and Marketplace partner – we use Atlassian tools extensively in all of our day to day operations, and we too, saw the benefits of the Atlassian Cloud – so much so that we have migrated our operations as well! Migration from Atlassian’s server products to the Cloud can often be tricky, especially when it comes to marketplace apps, but in this case, there was no effort at all! Connect Intercom to Jira using the Intercom for Jira marketplace app, and you’ll be good to go!
Cloud migration isn’t as simple as moving data or applications to the Cloud. To be successful, you need to thoroughly assess existing workloads and processes, involve your key stakeholders, and explore all of your cloud options. You’ll need to plan your strategy, review security, compliance, and support aspects, back up data, and train users on new and improved features. Cloud migrations are a significant undertaking. To guarantee success, you need to work with an experienced partner who will be with you every step of the way on your migration journey.
With over 15 years of experience providing custom solutions to a wide variety of customers, Addteq is here as your Cloud Migration Partner. We have performed many migrations spanning organizations of all sizes, from small, independent businesses to enterprise-level organizations. We have successfully migrated over 500 thousand Atlassian and DevOps users across on-premise and cloud environments. As your Cloud Migration Partner, we will work closely with you and your teams to assess your current environment, recommend a migration strategy, build and execute a migration plan, and provide support once you have transitioned to the Cloud. If a custom solution is required, we can create one that meets your every need.
As an Atlassian Platinum Partner, Addteq has the industry knowledge and technical experience to work with the full suite of Atlassian products and the vast library of applications these products connect to. We provide a range of accredited Atlassian consulting, migration, and training services, along with integrations and customizations to organizations across all industries. Our advanced knowledge of Atlassian Cloud products, including product configuration expertise, customized solutions, and implementation services, enables us to power innovation for organizations making the most of the Atlassian Cloud.
Our large pool of Atlassian SMEs build partnerships based on mutually beneficial relationships. By investing time, implementing the right resources, and focusing on open communication, our Atlassian experts have what it takes to provide solutions that best fit the needs of your business, regardless of size or type. We’ve been there, and we’ve done this – and we’d love the opportunity to help with your migration.
Would you like to know how Addteq can help you achieve this synergy of Intercom and Jira, bringing your conversational ticketing to the next level?
