How to Submit a Great Support Ticket

Picture, if you will, that you're using HubSpot (should be pretty easy to imagine). Everything's humming along and you are GETTING STUFF DONE. But all of a sudden, you run into a roadblock and your productivity is halted in its tracks. It may be that you run across a totally new behavior in your portal that you've never seen before, or maybe you're not entirely sure if you're using a particular tool in the most efficient way. You've checked our Academy resources, but you're not finding the answer you're looking for. What's your next step?

Well, that's where HubSpot Support enters the picture. We're here to help and we want to make sure that we're providing as valuable of a service to you as possible. Regardless of how you reach out to us—whether by calling in directly, submitting a call-back request, or opening a case through email—there are certain pieces of information that our Support Engineers love seeing in a ticket. These are the bits of information that help us address your case in the most complete and efficient manner possible.

To help anchor this information to the real world, I'll be breaking down an example ticket through each of the following steps. So read on for the inside scoop on what our team is looking for to help get you back to being your regular productive self in no time at all!

1. Know the Basics

If you've ever called in to our Support line before, you'll know that one of the first pieces of information we look for is your HubID. You can find your HubID in the top-right corner of your portal's menu bar, just under your company's domain:

This number is important because it is unique to your portal, and with it we can quickly access your account so that we know exactly where we'll need to start troubleshooting. If you don't know your HubID (maybe you forgot your password and can't log in to check what it is), your company's domain name will be the next best option.

The other quick piece of information that you'll want to provide is the tool you were using when the issue occurred. Once we know your portal, if we can then narrow the issue down to the particular area in that portal where you were working (Contacts, Content, Reports, etc.), we'll know where specifically to focus on first.

Example case information: "My HubID is 525862."

2. Share Your Goal

Sharing your end goal helps our team understand the context of the case. If we know what you're trying to accomplish, we'll have a better sense of the tools you'll need to use and the resources that will be most helpful to share. Think of this step as providing the baseline for the conversation, the thing that we'll be working with you to achieve.

This step is especially useful if you haven't run into a specific obstacle, but instead are curious if a certain thing is possible in HubSpot. Knowing your goal in those cases allows us to provide more specific advice on solutions (or potential workarounds, as the case may be). Naturally, your goal will vary from ticket to ticket.

Example case information: "I'm trying to send a notification email to my salespeople when a contact is assigned to them."

3. Describe the Obstacle

Once we know what you're trying to accomplish, we'll want to explore the thing that's preventing you from achieving that goal. Similar to the last point, this information will vary from case to case. A good way to approach this part of the ticket is to describe what you expected to happen, and then describe what actually happened.

It's likely that the "expectation" part of this info will be more detailed than the "what actually happened" part. That's OK! For this part of the conversation, we're looking for whatever general details you can provide on the behavior you're seeing and on steps you may have taken already to troubleshoot the issue.

Example case information: "All of my other salespeople are receiving the emails fine, but for one person they never arrived. We checked in their SPAM folder, but the emails aren't there either."

4. Show us Examples

Whenever possible, our team looks for specific examples of the obstacle you're running into. If we can find evidence of the issue at hand (or if we can recreate the behavior you're seeing), that gives us a starting point for our troubleshooting. The more specific you can get, the better. (If you're submitting an email ticket, this is the section where you'll want to consider attaching screenshots.)

Example case information: "The workflow that is supposed to be sending the notifications is called "New Contact Owner Assignment" and the salesperson who hasn't been receiving emails is w.loman@company.com."

The Final Product

Here's the full text of the imagined email ticket:

My HubID is 525862. I'm trying to send a notification email to my salespeople when a contact is assigned to them. All of my other salespeople are receiving the emails fine, but for one person they never arrived. We checked in their SPAM folder, but the emails aren't there either. The workflow that is supposed to be sending the notifications is called "New Contact Owner Assignment" and the salesperson who hasn't been receiving emails is w.loman@company.com. Why aren't those emails going through?

When we put all the information together into a single ticket (and finish it off with a focused question), we can see a full picture of the case: the goal, the obstacle, and a specific example are all included. With that information in hand, the Support Engineer in this imaginary case would be able to check the specific workflow for potential issues, and then check the salesperson's email address to see how other HubSpot emails are sending to that individual.

So, what's the result of this effective ticket? A satisfying (and quick) conclusion! Thanks to the details provided in the original ticket, the Support Engineer was able to check the history of the workflow and quickly discover that a previous email to "w.loman" had resulted in a bounce. The Support rep then unbounced the email address and replied to the original ticket with information on the specific IP addresses that the user can whitelist to ensure that internal emails sent from workflows are accepted by their email client.

We constantly look for ways to pre-empt potential user questions, but there will always be a need for a live support channel to handle unexpected questions and roadblocks. By using the above advice, however, you can ensure that you get back into action as quickly as possible!