Author:  David Petit

Date:  2/7/24



Receiving a voicemail from an existing customer is one of the more challenging transactions that we have to perform in Freshdesk.  You will need to follow these steps when you try to add a new Contact and it tells you that this contact already exists. The problem exists because the phone number on the voice mail is always our MG Hotline phone number rather than the customer phone number.  So when we try to create a New Contact as indicated in our Hotline training, you will have to transfer the ticket information to the existing Contact.  I find the easiest way to deal with this is to do as follows:



Copy Information from the Phone ticket 



  1. Open the Phone ticket so you can view the contents
  2. “Copy” all of the voicemail transformation text. You will be inserting this text to the new ticket later.  
  3. Download the voice mail recording to your computer.  You will be inserting this recording into the new ticket later.  

 

Update the contact information

 

  1. Go to the Freshdesk contacts tab which is right below the tickets tab on the left side of your screen.
  2. Search for the existing contact.  Let's say the existing contact name was "Paula".  When you type Paula in the search field, contacts that contain Paula appear. If there are a lot of contacts with the name Paula you can refine your search by entering her email address in the search box. 
  3. When you have found the correct contact, select that contact to view their information.
  4. If you have the correct contact, Select "Edit" and update the contact information.  Ensure that the name, phone number and email are correct and add any other information that may be missing.  For example, if you have a second email address or phone number be sure to add that as well.

 

Create a new Ticket 

 

  1. From the contact screen just to the right of contact name, select "New Ticket"
  2. Fill in the Subject field just as you would have when updating the original ticket.
  3. Insert the voicemail transcription that you copied into the Description field. 
  4. At the bottom of the new ticket click on the paper clip icon and attach the voicemail recording that you downloaded to your computer.
  5. At the bottom of the screen, click on the "Create" button. 
  6. Verify that the ticket was created:  Go back to the Customer / Tickets tab and verify that the new ticket is at the top of the Tickets list.

 

Process the new ticket

 

  1. If all has gone as planned, go back to the Tickets tab and you should see the new ticket at the top of your ticket list.
  2. you can continue processing this new ticket and send emails in response if the contact has an email address.
  3. When you are all done, mark the new ticket as "Closed" 
  4. If all has gone well, you can delete the original Phone ticket.  
  5. If you have any concern about whether you have completed it correctly, add a comment in the summary of the ticket so any other Hotline staff member would see what has been done and whether this ticket is being left in place for further evaluation by some other hotline staff member. Leave both tickets in place and contact Linda Stewart or David Petit to advise them of the situation.