So, you want to try using a support ticket system for your blog – here’s how…

What is a support ticket system anyway?

A support ticket system hold little threads, or chats, between your visitors and you. Visitors can start these threads by creating a ticket. Once opened, a ticket will hold all communication history between you and your visitor. And, it will be visible to both of you at all times.

How do your visitors use it?

For your visitors, using a support ticket system, is very similar to filling in a ‘contact-us‘ form. Have a look at our contact form. Once submitted, the visitor gets a confirmation message, acknowledging that you received the contact. It also tell how you’re going to reply (so that your reply doesn’t get caught in a SPAM filter) and how to add more messages to that ticket.

Once you reply, the visitor receives your reply by email. Each email includes a link to the ticket, where the entire history can be seen and new messages can be added.

So, from your visitors’ point of view, a support ticket system is not much different than sending and receiving emails. There’s no password, no registration and no other delays in contacting you.

How does it look from your side?

Whenever you receive a new message, you get a notification email. Just like the visitors, you’ll be able to see the complete history of back and forth messages. You’ll be able to arrange tickets by category, search tickets and view just tickets that are pending a reply.

You can reply to tickets, or just close them, so that they stop appearing as ‘pending‘.

Setting up a support ticket system for your blog

These are the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Sign up for an account (your name, email and password)
2. Create a new support center (enter the name for the support center)
3. Create a department (for example, ‘article ideas’ or ‘review requests’)
4. Add to your blog (include a single link)

In a bit more detail…

Sign up for an account

Go to ICanLocalize and select the sign-up button at the bottom of the screen. You’ll need to enter your name, email and nickname. Confirm your email address and you’re done.

Create a new support center

Click on the Support Centers tab and select Create a new support center. Enter a name. This name will be visible to your visitors and appear in all notification emails – so, select something meaningful. “Sarah’s world of flowers” would be a good name, if that’s your blog’s name.

Create at least one support department

Most likely, you’ll have use to several departments. These will help you sort out your visitor’s contacts. For example, if you’re getting requests for product reviews, a ‘product reviews’ department would make sense. Most people choose a ‘tips’ department for general article ideas.

The Preferred language means which language you want to receive tickets in. The system can have tickets in foreign languages translated for you (paid option). If you don’t need this, just select Don’t translate any message.

Add the support ticket system to your blog

After you’ve created your support center, you’ll see a link to web integration instructions. This will give you different integration options. The easiest way to include the support ticket to your blog is by including a single link to it. Just copy the link address of your ’support center preview’ and add it to your blog’s theme.

This will make your contact information appear on every page. You can also include this in your ‘about me’ page.