If you have a problem with your car and take it to a garage, you’d probably say to the mechanic something along the lines of:
“Hello Mr. Mechanic! That car over there is mine. It started making a knocking noise a couple of days ago, usually happens when I brake. Can I book it in? Here’s the keys.”
What you’d be unlikely to do is walk into the garage and just say:
“Car’s broke. Fix it”
Obviously the mechanic would need to know where your car was for starters and you’d probably want give them a clue as to what was broken so they knew where to look instead of spending hours (for which you’re paying!) randomly testing different components.
Pretty much common sense, really!
That said, you’d be surprised how often our Support team receive emails from customers which really give us very little to go on. While we’ll do our best, if you want your problem to be diagnosed and resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible you do need to try and meet us half way – we’re often very dependent on the information you provide to us. If you omit that information, chances are your next response from us will be various questions to try to narrow down the options, instead of a resolution to your issue.
There are two reasons we need customers to be open with us:
Firstly, if we have the full details of your issue, chances are we’ll know the resolution (or know exactly where to look) and be able to provide a first point resolution. And secondly, if we have the full details, we won’t have to resort to guessing, which at best significantly delays your reply as we try to find out what could be wrong and at worst means we could perform an unwanted action.
So, here’s my guide to exactly what information we need from you in order to assist you as effectively as possible:
1) Raise a Support Ticket instead of sending a general email.
This confirms your identity as it comes from your Control Panel, so there’s no need for us to get back to you with security checks.
2) Be specific about the service to which you’re referring.
Include the relevant domain name or VPS IP address etc. Simple, but if you have multiple services then we need to know what one you’re talking about!
3) Tell us exactly what the problem is.
Provide full details of what isn’t working for you. Is something timing out? Are you getting a login issue etc?
4) Tell us whether it’s permanent or intermittent.
This is an important one. If your problem is intermittent, we’ll need to do multiple tests to get a range of results.
5) Send us any Error Messages.
The single most used feature in diagnosing an issue. Even if you think the error is in a foreign language, there’s a good chance it will mean something to us so just copy and paste it and we’ll see.
6) Let us know if you’ve made any changes recently.
It may be coincidence, but it’s probably best to let us make that call. Had you done anything different around the time your problem started? Over 90% of support tickets we get regarding a VPS suddenly blocking access to a user have resulted in comments along the lines of “I can’t think what would have caused it. I mean, I was only adding some extra firewall rules in and closing ports”.
So there you go, six simple steps that will only take you a couple of minutes, but the end result is getting a resolution back to you and saving yourself a considerable amount of time in the long run.
