Question

We have email templates that specifically request clients not to reply unless they have additional info for a case. We specifically (politely) contact repeat offenders to explain what that means, but still clients reply to final resolution emails with a courtesy "thanks" or "great" or "finally!".

The result is that after we have set a Case to CLOSED (Responded), we continually get replies from clients that reactivate the Case in question. That's just one more thing to deal with on a case that we thought was closed for good. It's small, but it's annoying.

Is there any way that anyone has found to avoid this problem?

:)
Please only post answers with additional information. Courtesy non-answers will extend the life of this question or otherwise result in unnecessary time being spent. thanks
:)

Answer 1

We struggle with this too, but haven't come up with a good solution yet. You really can't blame people for not reading the fine print on the e-mail or for being courteous.

I did have one idea to address this, but it would require a change to the behavior of FogBugz. I suppose it could be made optional for those who don't like the idea.

Proposed behavior when an e-mail comes in on a closed case:

• Email message IS added to history of case.
• Case is not re-opened automatically.
• Auto-response is sent back to sender stating that case has been closed with instructions/link for allowing them to request it be re-opened.

In this scenario there is no extra work required unless the case was closed prematurely, which should be the less frequent situation.

Benefits of this approach:

• Avoids the potentially ugly situation where a customer thinks a case is still open and is waiting on a tech who thinks he/she is done with the issue.
• Text could be added to the notice asking them to send a separate e-mail if it is a different issue. This would reduce the number of times a separate problem is appended to a previous one because they re-use the old support e-mail thread to start a new issue report.

Example Case Closed Notificaiton:

Case 123 "My printer is busted" has been closed by the support technician. If this issue is indeed not resolved, or you have further problems on the same issue, you can re-open this case by clicking the link below or responding to this message and appending the word "REOPEN" to the subject line of the e-mail.

Any additional information you would like to add to the records for this case can be sent in a reply to this message, but the support technician will not be notified unless you re-open the case using the instructions above.

If you would like to open a case for a different issue, use the following e-mail link instead of replying to this thread.

Answer 2

I take "thank you" emails as an indication that the customer is confused as to the status of the conversation. This kind of response invites replies:

Rebooting your computer should solve your issue. If that doesn't work, you might try blowing out the dust from the plug where your keyboard attaches to your computer.

Rich

Fog Creek Support

We've had tremendous success with a social engineering approach to this problem. We still get "thank you" emails, but they are few and far between. Here's my 2 snippet, which I put at the bottom of most emails.

Rebooting your computer should solve your issue. If that doesn't work, you might try blowing out the dust from the plug where your keyboard attaches to your computer.

Let me know if I can be of further assistance, if indeed this was helpful, or if this raises any other questions.

All the best,

Rich Armstrong

Fog Creek Software

If you're really verbose, like above, the customer gets more of a sense that you solved their issue and the conversation is over. They don't feel the need to reply. This really actually works! It fits, also, with our general bent toward using social solutions to problems involving people and software solution to problems with systems.