FOUR AND A HALF YEARS LATER, THIS GOT RESOLVED. WOW.
https://www.repairshopr.com/blog/posts/feature-friday-new-ticket-created-from-resolved-ticket-customer-reply
UN-DECLINE AND RESOLVE THIS.

Thanks for merging that, Bobby. Is there any way you can run this by admin to revert to Under Review? It was originally declined within 2 weeks and never had time to get any votes. The duplicate post accumulated over 30, and now there are a combined 34 votes. I’d appreciate reconsideration so that further votes can be cast to this (clearly popular) topic. Best Regards!

SO APPARENTLY SOMEONE STRAIGHT COPIED MY POST AS THEIR OWN ON 1/24/17:

http://feedback.repairshopr.com/forums/165658-general/suggestions/17833633-disable-customer-reply-ability

I guess redirect votes there until RS merges these or something?

@Troy @Robert: See, I told you many other people support this idea (34 as of current)...

Can this be in consideration for revisiting? Possibly as a ticket automation?

We don't find that customers replying (i.e. reopening tickets) is particularly confusing, we just close them again (if its a thank you message etc) and move on. If its a new related (warranty?) job, we just click "New Rework Ticket" which clones the ticket including the new comment made by the customer and we process it from there.

@RS: I can see now how re-opening old tickets is a common helpdesk feature, but I definitely think it would be helpful to make the custom re-open time window. Something like 7 days would be an awesome default for most shops to answer follow-up questions and remedy warranty tweaks. After that time window, it becomes a new inquiry/issue and would help repair shops track new jobs much better :)

i think there perhaps needs to be a two status system or a simple flag system for some events like customer replied.

I'm finding it very annoying to have it sitting on one of our custom statuses and then to have it moved off that onto customer reply and then having to remember to put it back

We agree, giving the client the ability to respond to old tickets, and then create a new ticket is quite annoying. ESPECIALLY if the client gets a virus and accidentally spams us, thus making a hundred new tickets.. ugh!

Please give us the option to disable this, or make it so it does NOT make a new ticket, only re-opening the old one that they responded to.

Thanks!

Definitely. Have only recently started using repairshopr, but this is one of the issues I imagined would happen quite frequently, and it has!

SETTING REQUEST: I understand how allowing tickets to be re-opened by a 'customer reply' is a normal expectation in a helpdesk software, but is there anyway we can disable/customize this to force new ticket creation?

REASONING: When we mark a ticket as resolved, it is RESOLVED. It's triple checked, paid for, confirmed and out the door - DONE.

Problem: Almost 100% of the time, a customer replying to one of our resolved tickets is an ACCIDENT. They actually have a completely different problem/issue, and instead of making a NEW inquiry, they respond to the old ticket. Then tech's get confused on what the issue is actually about, and they have to manually copy/paste information from the old ticket to a new one, remember to close the old ticket again, etc. Sometimes it's just the customer replying "thank you" or writing a testimonial a month later. Very annoying.

IDEA: It would be ideal if we could set a "ticket re-open window" that would specify how many days after a ticket is resolved that it can be re-opened from the customer's side. For us, we would set the window to be 1 day, maybe even 0. Other shops might want to leave a 14 day period for customers to reply and re-open a ticket - every shop is different.

RESULT: If a customer try's to reply to a ticket that is already marked as resolved (and is outside of the reply window), the reply would automatically be turned into a LEAD. That way it can be handled the appropriate way we want it to. And if it's just a thank you or testimonial, it doesn't re-open old work and confuse techs.

REASONING: We prefer to track how many incidents a customer has had, even if they are our fault and we have to do warranty work just a few days later - we like to be able to see how many different inquiries have been made. Some stores like to draw out tickets for the same issue over new incidents. This is a setting that really needs to be customizable in order for shops to run using the workflow they prefer.

CONCLUSION: AHHH! Genius! The genius!

@RS: I would like to request to have this topic left open for new votes. It didn't even have two weeks to accumulate others input. Please un-decline this so that others may comment/vote if they like the idea.

Another famous ticket system we currently use handles this slightly differently but the same idea as you suggest. After it has been closed for a period of time (I'm not sure how long) the new reply would create a new ticket that was linked to the old one for reference.

We should re-open this soon. Because... the genius.

@Robert: I would like to request to have this topic left open for new votes. It didn't even have two weeks to accumulate others input. Please un-decline this so that others may comment/vote if they like the idea.

Hey Robert,

Is there any way you can leave this topic open to see if other's would be interested in this functionality? I really think it would be helpful for a lot of other shops. There's really no value in allowing customers to re-open tickets that are 30+ days old. Sometimes even longer than that...

We just had a ticket for a new purchase from 8 months ago re-open because the customer had a power surge. The techs started replying to the old ticket, and when the customer brought in the machine they didn't know what to do. They thought to check in the machine under the existing ticket, but it was a completely unrelated issue. Then when they made a new ticket, none of the communication/troubleshooting notes were there from the old ticket.

I'm not saying this should get approved right away, but others may be able to share ideas to make this topic more realistic or valuable.

Thanks,

This is a great idea!