I wanted to cross-post something I wrote on a Returned to Sender topic for all of those still waiting on an update on a shipping ticket or issue.
I would be lying if I said that to all of the 600+ tickets I have. As I am not on all of them yet, nor do I know if I have all I need from you or the forwarder. I’ll explain a bit more of my process regarding the specific cases of Shipment Returned To Sender in the EU, but the general approach is true for almost all types of tickets.
Each day (and night) I try to work on these cases, from two sides:
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From the list of returned EU shipments I finally got from the forwarder last week. This requires me to find out if there’s a ticket from the backer already, to update the ticket and send a request to the backer to confirm what address to have it sent to this time around (even if still the same I need to know). So if you have such a ticket and let me know this in advance by replying to the last email you got back from the ticket system (don’t change the subject line!), then I can immediately add the new information to the re-shipment list, and only inform you via the ticket of this.
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From the tickets where the backer tells me this has been reported on the tracking information or after contacting DHL. This requires me to look the backer up in the list of returned EU shipments I finally got from the forwarder last week, if the shipment is on it I have to update the ticket and send a request to the backer to confirm what address to have it sent to this time around (even if still the same I need to know). So if you have such a ticket and let me know this in advance by replying to the last email you got back from the ticket system (don’t change the subject line!), then I can immediately add the new information to the re-shipment list, and only inform you via the ticket of this.
If the shipment is not yet on the list of returned EU shipments, I have to put the information on another list which I can send to the forwarder to check the status of the shipments and either change the address, re-send the shipment, or have DHL release the shipment if on hold, or all of these steps.
Rest Of World shipments work similarly, but we don’t have a list of shipments returned to sender for the ROW shipments yet. So there I work mostly from the ticket side like in step 2 above.
I just don’t want to lie or just pacify you guys, or should I actually do that? Would me just “touching” the ticket with an update “Ticket is not forgotten or cast aside” work for you guys? This is an honest question, I don’t know.
In any case rest assured that I will not stop until all tickets are dealt with one way or another. I don’t close or delete tickets without reading them, and all tickets regarding the shipping and orders of this campaign I will deal with. It just takes a lot of time to do so for everyone due to many reasons:
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I’m doing most of the work by myself when it comes to the shipping and orders tickets, no other agents trained or capable of doing it at the moment.
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There are many duplicate, follow-up, or even spam-like tickets, making the backlog only unnecessarily bigger. This is mostly due to people not realizing that each new email creates a new ticket, and that they therefore should reply to the last email received from the ticket system instead of sending a totally new email (subject line). Some people not only send new mails, but also do so incessantly as (they feel) they weren’t responded in time, compounding the issue even further. Or they mail via Backerkit, Indiegogo support, forum PM, and support@screeneo.com or any combination of these.
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People don’t include enough information in their ticket. Sometimes all I have is the email address they used to send the mail to support@screeneo.com, and at times that’s not the same email they used to back the campaign. Every time I have to go piece together the required information from Backerkit, Excel sheets, previous tickets (“I already wrote you guys 5 times about this!” but each ticket had part of the information), etc. it costs me valuable time. It’s okay if you don’t know your Backerkit ID for instance, but it helps me if you provide me with:
- your name or email you backed with if different from the one you’re mailing the support desk with
- your address postcode at least, the full address if you don’t mind
- the actual tracking code
- your IndieGoGo contribution ID
- your Backerkit ID
- if it’s a follow up request, the number of the previous ticket if known, or just replying to the last email received in the previous ticket submitted
- the steps you’ve already done to solve this issue you’re facing
- as detailed a description of your issue or request as possible
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Checking tracking codes is time consuming, and I’ve had situations where the website would reject my requests after a while as I had done too many within a certain period of time.
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I had to get better at handling the cases. The more I saw and handled, the better my system got. It’s not quite there yet, but I’m continually improving, by making macros, lookup lists, canned replies, anything to help me achieve more while doing less.
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All this time, I’m also still getting requests, personal messages, mentions, posts in threads like these, remarks and questions on the Indiegogo campaign page, FB groups and Messenger, internal mail from colleagues or the forwarder, etc.
Some of you might think “I don’t care about all this, just fix my issue already!”. And trust me, I want to. But I don’t always have an answer, or the full cooperation of every party involved, or all the information needed. So I try to keep going through the backlog and just triage everything till I can operate on the cases, from the most urgent ones (aren’t they all by now) to the less urgent ones.
Anyways, this explanation also took me almost 20 minutes to put together. I hope it helps you all at least understand what I’m dealing with, and hopefully will help you to have just a bit more patience with this as well.
Ivo