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Customer support at Access explained

Get the most from your support agreement by understanding our support channels, processes, and how we prioritise and resolve queries.

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Written by Huzayfah Patel

Overview

We’re proud of how we run support at Access and want to be transparent with you regarding our operation and how it works. Here we explain key concepts, the channels available to you, and some of the key processes that our teams follow to provide you with expert technical support.


Terminology

Our key concepts and terminology that you may see us use:

  • Access Digital Assistant: This is the pop-up bubble where you can reach support.

  • Messenger: The window in the Access Digital Assistant that contains your conversations.

  • Support channels: The different ways you can contact support.

  • Conversation: This is the communication you have within the messenger. Our teams may also refer to this as a Chat.

  • Ticket: Conversations transition into tickets when more investigation is required.

  • Auto-close: An automated process that closes communication due to lack of response.

  • Priorities: This reflects the business impact of your query.

  • MyAccess: Our customer portal, where you can manage your account, view invoices and view your support history.


Your support experience

Most of the time when you contact our support team, you’ll get an answer to your query there and then through our Access Digital Assistant. However, there may be times where we need to progress your query through a different support channel.

Your support agreement

When you sign up with us, you pick a Customer Success Plan (CSP) that determines what type of support you can access. Your CSP includes a set number of named support contacts who you nominate as people who are authorised to contact our support team on behalf of your organisation.

By assigning named support contacts, you help ensure that support requests, advice, and system changes are managed by approved team members with the appropriate authority. If someone who is not a named support contact reaches out to us, we'll ask them to work through one of your authorised contacts so that requests can be validated and approved by the right people within your organisation.


Key features

Our key features of the Access Digital Assistant:

[In the table, use H3 for the headers, and the grey background]

Icon

Feature

Details

Home

See the product system status, or start a conversation, and any open tickets.

Messages

See your past conversations, or start a new one.

Tickets

View your ticket history, including your open tickets, and review your resolved tickets.

Help

Check out our support articles directly in the pop-up.

News

Stay up to date on any news items and posts.

Support channels

Your support journey starts with the Access Digital Assistant, if your query is not resolved, our support team picks up your conversation. If the query is complex or may take more time to resolve, we turn your conversation into a ticket.

From your perspective, this all happens in the same chat window. Understanding the distinction helps you know what to expect when you contact support, and why some queries take longer to resolve than others.

The terminology exists to help us work more efficiently behind the scenes, not to change how you interact with them. Whether your query is handled as a conversation or a ticket, you'll receive the help you need through the same familiar interface.

Conversations

A conversation with our support team works a little differently from the live chat experience you might be used to. Once your chat reaches our support team, you can step away and come back later without losing the conversation.

If you don't see our reply in the messenger within three minutes, you'll receive an automatic email from us, letting you know that there's an update. If you open our message within that time, we won't send you an email notification. And if we send multiple messages to you and there's still no reply for another three minutes, we'll group them into one email, so you won't receive multiple emails from us for the same purpose.

Conversation auto-close

We’ll send any messages through the messenger and to your email address, so you won’t miss our reply. If we don’t hear from you within 3 hours, we’ll send you a reminder. If you still don’t reply after another 3 hours, we’ll automatically close the chat. You can reply and reopen it within 24 hours.

🤓 Tip: If you think you’ll need more time, let us know and we can pause or snooze your chat.

Tickets

Tickets are for queries that take more time to resolve, require investigation, multiple steps, or collaboration between our support team and other teams here at Access.

Once your query is with us, we’ll keep you updated on its progress every step of the way. If we need any additional information, or if we need you to test or implement a solution, we’ll contact you through the messenger and email.

You can reply to tickets from the Access Digital Assistant or directly from your email notifications.

You'll see updates when:

  • We submit your ticket.

  • We change the status, such as moving from In progress to Waiting on customer.

  • We send you a reply.

  • We resolve your ticket.

Ticket auto-close

If we’re waiting for information from you or need you to test a proposed solution, we’ll keep your query open for up to one business day. If we don’t receive a response, we’ll send a reminder and allow a further business day for a reply. After that, we’ll resolve the query. One business day later, we’ll close it. You can reply and reopen it within 24 hours.

MyAccess

The MyAccess customer portal is where you can manage your account, view invoices and view your support history.

🤓 Tip: To view your support history, click Support cases when logged in to MyAccess.

Phone support

Depending on your support agreement and the product you use, phone support may also be available as an additional channel alongside chat for named support contacts.

Regardless of your support agreement, our support team may call you or offer a screen share if we think this will help to resolve your query, you're always welcome to continue via chat.


Priorities

The Access Digital Assistant automatically assigns a priority when you submit a query. Our team then reviews the details and adjusts the priority where necessary.

This prioritisation process ensures that we’re addressing critical, business-impacting issues first, while still allowing us to process general enquiries and lower-impact requests as promptly as possible.

⚠️ Important: Raising multiple interactions for the same query does not increase priority.

What we need from you

To help us prioritise your query correctly, we’ll need the following information. When you give us the full details upfront, we can quickly understand your issue, assign the right priority, and get straight to finding a resolution.

The information below helps us to locate and view the issue:

  • A clear description of the issue.

  • Steps to reproduce what you're experiencing.

  • Date and time you first experienced the issue.

  • The page or URL that you were on when you experienced the issue.

  • A full screenshot of the issue or error message.

  • Include your whole screen including the URL bar at the top, and the time stamp at the bottom. These answers help us to assess the severity of what’s gone wrong:

  • What browser you were using, and if you tried any others.

  • The number of users affected.

  • Whether there is a workaround available.

  • The impact this is having on your daily operations.

If additional information changes the impact of a query, we will amend the priority.

🤓 Tip: By providing detailed information, screenshots, error messages, and affected user examples, it helps us assess and resolve queries faster.

Here’s an example of a good way to phrase your query, that allows us to review the information quickly, and an example of a query where we would have to go back to you with further questions before being able to help:

Detailed

Nothing happens when I run the Usage report. I go to the Reporting suite and click Go on the Usage report, it looks to load for a few seconds, then just goes back to the reports list. I tried to run it at around 1pm on Chrome, then again on Edge. A colleague tried to run it for me at around 1:20 but got the same issue. I need this resolved as soon as possible, without this report I can't send the weekly invoice to my suppliers which will have knock-on effects.
​

Lacking detail

I need help with my reports. They’re not working properly.
​


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Priority levels explained

Priority is based on business impact, not submission order. We use four priority levels; P1 to P4. Here’s a breakdown of what these mean, and some examples of the types of queries that would fall into that category.

Priority

Description

Examples

P1

Critical

A major system outage or critical functionality is unavailable, affecting multiple users or preventing business operations.

  • System unavailable.

  • All users unable to log in.

  • Critical feature completely inaccessible.

  • Security vulnerability or data corruption concern.

P2

Major

A key feature or business process is significantly impacted, with no reasonable workaround available.

  • Issues impacting multiple customers but not a full outage.

  • Major feature not working as expected.

P3 Moderate

An issue affecting a single user or a non-critical function. Business operations can generally continue.

  • One user unable to access the system.

  • Reporting discrepancy.

  • Unexpected behaviour in a feature.

P4

Limited

General questions, cosmetic issues, or low-impact requests that do not significantly affect business operations.

  • How to questions.

  • Minor display or formatting issues.
    ​


Human support availability

In Access Legal Compliance, our support team is available during the days and times listed below, as agreed in your contract:

Essential

Standard

Premier

09:00 - 17:00

Monday - Friday

08:00 - 18:00

Monday - Friday

08:00 - 18:00

Monday - Friday

📌 Note: If you contact us outside of these times, we will reply to you when we’re next available.

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