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When customer REPLY with a different email address, another ticket is created

S
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Most of my users have their company email forwarded to a gmail account... when the ticket is created via API is created with the company email, but when they answer usually they do it with the gmail account and the system doesn't recognize is answering to a ticket and created a new ticket.

Can this be fixed?

Thanks,

Sebastian
This topic has been closed for comments

49 replies

alexjaniess
Rank

when the ticket is created via API is created with the company email, but when they answer usually they do it with the gmail account and the system doesn't recognize is answering to a ticket and created a new ticket. Can this be fixed?

E
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This is really panful, generally multiple people are on my customers email and they all interact, couldn't would simply look at the subject and look for the number after the # :  subject:......[#...] and reuse this number instead of creating a ticket a new ticket ? This is not going to fly.

E
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You are right! If I were Fresh Desk, I would be so embarrassed. Every thread you look at, Ana or Vijay are promising something in a month, and here we are a year later with nothing. Fresh desk, please step up your game.

S
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Hello Aduhon, 




I was responding to Alex Mackenzie on previous post. Sorry if that wasn't clear.




Regards,


Sudha


A
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Is this meant for my colleague Alex Reed - areed@new-innov.com? Otherwise, I don;t understand your question.


S
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Hello Alex,




Can you please let me know how email threading is breaking for you? Currently, we are following several techniques to match email replies to the same ticket as listed in our Knowledge Base article on Email Threading.





Thanks,


Sudha


A
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This has been an on-going issue for us for the past couple of months and yet I have only just discovered this thread. I quite like how after 4 years you guys still haven't actually managed to find a fix for this, only another work-around. 




I understand merging the email addresses together only fixes the issue once its happened, as you would only know the second email address once the customer has replied and then only be able to merge it.




Also with this merging feature, you are limited to 5 emails per contact.... which for us is not enough.




Fresh desk, please can you let us all know, if you plan to fix this issue or whether we should give up asking for it?


A
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This is becoming a real nuisance for our business too. Why can't any reply to a ticket be part of the original ticket? If the client replies, it means they received our reply. - over and done. And if it is a different issue, the agent can split it.


Issues like these really take away from the Freshdesk experience , which is sad.


P
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Hi Koh Chew Jin,


Could you share the specific use case for which you are having a challenge in threading tickets. We would like to understand the conditions of breakage in details.


Thanks,

Priyo,

Freshdesk Product Management


J
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Koh Chew Jim, I would recommend looking at other options if this is a showstopper.  FreshDesk hasn't really made any significant improvements to their system in the 3 years I've been using it, and we're actually in the process of looking at other solutions as a result (not really because of this issue, but because of numerous other limitations).


K
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Hi, I am trial-ing FD and getting multiple tickets creating like you folks are describing here. Kind of a show stopper for me. Any "recommendations" ?


H
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Ola, once i wrote this comment yesterday Freshdesk was putting me to moderation mode. Nice turn. FD, here are customers spending or want to spend money. this is a 4 Year old painful problem. Is there any reason for not simply fixing this?

O
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I agree fully with Holger's comment.


I can also confirm that the issue is in fact not solved, in contrast to what I wrote in my previous comment.


This can all be solved easily using the right techniques (I've already linked to the relevant RFC earlier). This prevents us to implement freshdesk in our sales department in addition to tech support, which most likely means we will have to migrate to another platform.


H
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I just noticed the the 4 Years old threat here, We have used fresh desk 2 Years ago, and it was really a pain. The ticket ID was not transported as header in the Emails, hence many recrated tickets just because of different email addresses. Heldesk Software from the 90s has solved this from the beginning.


2 Years later we are considering to give freshdesk another trial. And I must see nothing has changed over 4 Years! Now you asking you cusomer to merge tickets as you not solving this classic problem in the beginning.


May you take a break with your pushy marketing activities and go back to drawing board for a few minutes and resolve a long standing issue.


A
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We are happy to inform you that we have rolled out the contact merge feature in Freshdesk and it has been enabled for all paid accounts. You can find this merge option in the contact details section, under the Customer's tab. Clicking on Merge, provides you with a search option using which you can look for the duplicates and merge them together.


In case you do not see the Merge option, please send in an email to support@freshdesk.com so that we can enable it for you.


K. Andrew Navin


D
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I have to agree this is a deal breaker for me as well. We are currently trialing Freshdesk and having 5 tickets per issue is warping our stats. Don't get me wrong - this is a fantastic system but this small issue is enough to not convert me to a paying customer. Freshdesk please fix this ASAP or we will be forced to go with Zendesk.


O
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I just noticed a message from a different mail-address were automatically merged with the ticket now, so it seems like this isue might already be fixed. Will have to wait and see.


O
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I still don't understand why certain messages should be kept outside of the conversation. If someone replies to an email, it means that they already have recieved a copy of it somehow, so there's no security breach there.


As I have already mentioned, every email already carries a unique id, and a method for threading by referring to the id of the previous mails in the conversation using this ID (which most email-clients implement).


Why do you have to invent a new (flaky) method when there already exists a widely used standard that works well?


F
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Hmm this is a pretty major issue. Any solution which requires training the end user to use specific email addresses or requires support staff to religiously categorise every user into a company in order to correctly bring in replies is not a good solution. You have to wait for the problem to occur, then categorise the new user, rather than preventing the issue from ever happening to begin with.


In my experience, using a ticket id in the subject to identify replies is the absolute best way to ensure tickets are linked correctly. Sure, occasionally you may have a user that changes the subject line for some reason, but that would be far, far more rare than users replying using different email addresses or cc'ing other recipients who also want to comment on the ticket. We will often have tickets which the client will forward to a third party like their IT support staff for comment and reply, and we'll want that reply to come in automatically. Cheap bare bones ticket systems like WHMCS do this perfectly well, so there's absolutely no reason this shouldn't be effortless in freshdesk. Linking replies to tickets via the ID in the subject (and perhaps secondarily via an ID in the message content) is really the only logical way that will ever work reliably in the real world. Guarantee you you will never stop receiving complaints until you do it this way.


annapoorna.venketaraman
Userlevel 3
Badge +8

Everyone, 


The Contact Merge feature is on its final testing phase and should be out by July mid, positively. 


As for the email threading patten, in addition to the ways I've explained on my previous response, if a reply comes from a user who is a part of the same "Company" as the requestor, it will thread the reply to the same ticket suggested by the ticket id on the subject line. 


May be this might help in the "Account Manager" scenario? Please do let us know. 


Anna


Head of Community
D
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We have this issue but our cause is different and I don't believe Merge Contacts is the solution:


A customer will often contact their Account Manager directly on an issue which requires assistance from our Freshdesk Support Team. As an Account Manager, they should reply to the client directly and copy Support. That is good customer service. It is not reasonable to force our clients to contact Freshdesk and Freshdesk only.


Today, Freshdesk opens a new ticket for the Account Manager when they reply; and then when the client replies it sends the client an email that a new ticket was opened even though this is now their THIRD email on the subject! - and then another ticket is opened for another recipient when they reply, and other, and other. You get the idea - it's a total mess!


+1 for @SupportFefeld (and others) - At the very least, Freshdesk needs to add support for optional [#<ticket_id>] in the subject line. It's nice to have all the clever functionality but fix the basic functionality first.


P
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This is causing duplicate issues for us as well.  Can you please provide a response around the solution.  Is the merging contact feature released soon.  Is there any consideration of a merging ticket option?


P
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We're having a major problem with this as well and, in our case, customers who are REPLYING to existing emails that they were already CC'd on are ending up duplicated.  Just adding my voice to this as there's already also a ticket that is being looked at.


O
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I'd also like an update on this issue.


Its not uncommon that we have 5-10 new tickets created for each actual ticket. (does not happen for every ticket, but often enough to be a real problem).


A
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Hoping to check the status of this request. Is there a public road map?


I'd really like to be able to either merge the contacts or change the email to an email that's already in use.


Any new ETA?


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