New Customer Support Ticket System to Facilitate Vendor and Customer Communication

ClickBank is releasing a new customer support ticket system and customer receipt page to better facilitate communication between you, the vendor, and your customers.

The new ticket system allows you to view and respond directly to all support requests submitted by your customers, including refund and cancellation requests. This new system also gives you the ability to attempt to save a sale by providing support directly to the customer.

This document provides you all of the information necessary to understand how the ticket system works, including specific information about:

  • The enhanced order receipt page for customers
  • Refund and cancellation requests
  • Vendor-requested refunds and cancellations
  • Technical support requests
  • Email notifications

Enhanced Order Receipt Page for Customers

As part of the Customer Support Ticket System, we are releasing an enhanced order receipt page for customers. Every time a customer purchases from ClickBank we send them an email receipt and send you a sales notification. Both of these emails link to the new order receipt page.

From the order receipt page customers can:

  • Download the product
  • Print an invoice
  • Request another copy of the receipt email
  • Change their email address
  • Request technical support
  • Request a refund
  • Request a cancellation (for recurring billing products)

To request technical support or request a refund or cancellation, customers must open a ticket. When a customer opens a ticket, both the customer and you, the vendor, receive an "open ticket" notification email.

When you receive the "open ticket" notification indicating that one of your customers has created a ticket, you must click the link provided in the email. This link takes you directly to the ticket, where you can reply directly to the customer. You do not need to log in to respond to open tickets.

When you use the ticket system to reply to the open ticket, a reply notification email is sent to both you and directly to the customer. At this point, the customer can click the link in their email to return to the ticket and then reply. Email notifications will continue to be sent any time either you or the customer replies or changes the ticket. When the customer's issue is resolved, either you or the customer can close the ticket.

Refund and Cancellation Requests

The new Customer Support Ticket System gives you the ability to attempt to save a sale. When a customer requests a refund or a cancellation, the ticket is configured to process the refund after one business day. As a result, you have one day to attempt to save the sale by offering assistance to help the customer utilize the product or service. If the customer is satisfied with the assistance, the ticket may be closed (by either you or the customer) and the refund will not occur.

If the assistance will take longer than one business day, but the customer agrees to withdraw their refund request in lieu of support, the customer or vendor may change the ticket to a "technical support request" ticket and the refund (or cancellation) will not be processed.

While you have the ability to close a ticket, or change a refund or cancellation request to technical support you may only do so with the customer's permission. Any ticket that has been closed or changed may be escalated to ClickBank for review. If you abuse this policy you will have your refund and cancellation tickets processed immediately and will no longer have the opportunity to try to save sales.

When a refund ticket is processed (after one business day), the order is refunded. A refund confirmation email is sent to both you and the customer, and the ticket is closed. The refund confirmation email is the same email confirmation you are sent today.

If the refund request was for a subscription product, only the latest bill in the subscription is refunded, and the subscription is canceled.

When a cancellation ticket is processed, no refund will occur; the subscription is simply canceled and no future billing occurs. This is an important and efficient change from our prior system.

If a customer requests a refund and you do not wish to save the sale, then no action is required. The refund will occur when the ticket is processed after one business day.

In our new system all refund and cancellation requests generate tickets, including when our customer service agents take requests over the phone. This means that vendors can attempt to save sales even when the customer contacted ClickBank directly on the phone.

Vendor-Requested Refunds and Cancellations

If a customer contacts you directly to request a refund or cancellation, you can initiate a refund or cancellation ticket from within your ClickBank account. A link to open a ticket on any order is available when you search for transactions (orders) from the Transaction page under the "Reporting" tab. Simply click on the "T" in the left hand column.

As the vendor, when you request a refund/cancellation, the ticket processes in 5 minutes, not one business day. It is assumed you do not want to try to save the sale if you enter the request yourself. You have 5 minutes to close the ticket before the refund/cancellation occurs, in case you mistakenly created the ticket.

Technical Support Requests

When a customer requests technical support, an "open ticket" notification is sent to both you and the customer. You can respond to this ticket by clicking the link provided in the notification email.

If you do not reply within two business days, we will send a "ticket inactivity warning" email to both you and the customer reminding both parties to either respond to the ticket or to close it if assistance is no longer needed. After two more days of inactivity, we send another warning. If either you or the customer takes no actions within two more business days (6 days total), the ticket is closed by our system.

A similar process occurs if you have responded, but no response has come from the customer. If the customer has not responded within 7 business days, we send a warning. If 7 more business days transpire (14 business days total), the ticket is closed by our system.

The purpose of these warnings is to prompt both parties to resolve the issue or, if assistance is no longer necessary, close the ticket. If the customer does not feel you are providing them with adequate support, they may always change their ticket from a technical support request to a refund request instead. At that point, a refund will process within one business day. This option is highlighted to the customer in the warning emails, so it is in your best interest to provide good support to your customers.

Email Notifications

Ticket emails are sent to your "Customer Service Email Address," as specified in your account settings. If there is no specific address for customer service, the emails will be sent to your "Account Email Address." ClickBank recommends that you specify a "Customer Service Email Address" that is different from your "Account Email Address" so that ticket emails are not intermingled with important client communications from ClickBank.

All ticket emails follow a consistent format that includes a message at the top indicating the reason for the email, followed immediately by the most recent comments. The body of the email contains standard information including a link back to the ticket, the ticket details, the order details, and at the bottom the entire history of comments on the ticket (for reference).

The system will generate the following emails, always sending them to both you and the customer:

  • Open ticket - sent whenever any ticket is opened
  • Reply - sent whenever either party replies (comments) on the ticket
  • Ticket Changed - sent whenever the type of the ticket is changed, for example from a refund ticket to a technical support ticket, or vice versa
  • Ticket closed - sent whenever a ticket is closed, so that both parties have the entire history of the ticket for reference purposes
  • Ticket inactivity warnings - sent when a technical support ticket has had no activity for a period of time (time varies depending on who last edited the ticket, you or the customer)

A PDF with samples of all emails is available for download.

FAQ

1. I would prefer to continue sending refund and cancellation requests to refunds@clickbank.com and cancel@clickbank.com because of the processes I currently have in place – is that possible?

This capability will only be available for a few more months. Soon, we will deploy an API to the ticket system that will allow third party ticketing systems to create or close tickets within our system.

In the meantime, take steps to stop using these email addresses and use our ticket system instead whenever possible. The preferred method to initiate a refund or cancellation request on behalf of your customer is to open a refund or cancellation ticket by clicking the link in either the purchase notification email or from the Transaction page within your ClickBank account.

2. What constitutes a business day?

You will be able to specify your time zone within your account by editing your Contact Information on the "My Account" page on the "Account Settings" tab. We will use the time zone to determine when your weekend officially starts. Any tickets that are set to expire on Saturday or Sunday (based on your time zone) will not expire until Monday.

3. Is there any change to the refund periods: 60 days for customers, 90 days for vendors?

There is no change to our refund policies. A customer can request a refund if the sale (or bill) is less than 60 days old. As the vendor, you can request a refund if the sale (or bill) is less than 90 days old.

4. Where can I see all subject lines and all email templates in one place so I can set up filters and auto-responders accordingly?

Please click here to see a PDF of all email templates for ticket system creations, updates, changes, escalations, and closures.