Best Practice Question - Cooling off Period for tickets?

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:02:32 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, I appreciate it!

My question is around what the best practice is in relation to cooling off periods for resolved tickets before ticket closure.

Our Help Desk is going to be launching a new ITSM ticketing system and we plan to have a 48 hour cooling off period for all resolved tickets before they are marked as closed. This will mean that when a customer has a ticket closed they will have 48 hours to reopen this ticket, before the ticket is automatically closed. After this 48 hour window the customer would need to open a new ticket.

My question is whether or not 48 hours is a good time frame for a cooling off period or whether this should be shorter/longer? Any feedback is welcome and much appreciated!

Kind Regards,

Dave Cameron

Tue, 6 Nov 2018 15:28:32 GMT

Five working days is the typical 'cooling off period' that I've seen across many sites across the globe in both public and private sectors.

Tue, 6 Nov 2018 16:00:48 GMT

Hi Dave,

This is an area I have addressed quite a bit over the years, there's no absolute right answer of course so all I can do is say how I've approached it.

Firstly, I agree with Phil in that I have always tried to adapt the 5 working days approach, I also like the "3 strikes" rule, in that user gets an email at resolution with relevant fix details but also with a notification of the cooling off period and that after that if the provider does not hear from them then a new ticket would need to be logged. After 3 days they get a gentle reminder of the move to closure in a further 2 days and then after the 5th day the system sets the status to closed (I would not email the user again). This approach does depend on your customers/users appetite for email and how they perceive communication from their provider at present (too much, about right, too little).

I would also say that you need to have someone with the role/system privilege to overwrite the cool off rule (I would say typically this would be your Svc Desk Manager), the reason I say that is that there will also be situations that drive process exceptions or relationship reasons whereby you may wanted to take the decision due to circumstances to re-open a call in a closed state (the challenge is ensuring this is the exception not the rule!).

Lastly, I would recommend that the resolution, cool off to closure timeframe and activity is clearly documented and agreed in your SLA's.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
John