A support agent’s guide to getting your issue solved quickly

Hello! I’m Merlin! Some of you might recognize my name, as I’ve been working as a customer support agent at Fastmail for an impressive 11 years. It might sound like a long time, but every day brings new challenges and opportunities. I constantly encounter unique issues that require me to expand my knowledge and provide exceptional support to our valued customers.

What surprises me is that no two tickets are ever the same, and hence, my job is never about sitting and answering the same questions repeatedly. Every customer has a different workflow, a different setup, and a different challenge they’re trying to overcome. Therefore, I get to put in conscious effort to investigate the issues and understand the unique workflow of each customer to suggest a suitable solution that meets their requirements.

That’s what makes this support interesting and what makes me love doing it for all these years.

At Fastmail, we’re committed to providing first-rate customer service around the clock through both our support form, and via email at support@fastmail.com. As soon as we receive a ticket, our goal is to provide quick, helpful responses that resolve the issue as efficiently as possible.

One thing that helps us tremendously is receiving clear and detailed information upfront. When customers include the relevant details in their first message, we’re often able to start troubleshooting immediately instead of spending time going back and forth gathering information. That can make a huge difference, especially when someone is already stressed about the issue they’re facing.

Let us look at an example scenario to understand what kind of information can help in troubleshooting and resolving an issue faster.

Emma is a long-time Fastmail customer who has been using the service for the past eight years to stay organised and manage her communication. One day, she noticed that she had not yet received a check from her insurance company. To follow up, she sent them an email asking for an update.

After some time, she checked her Fastmail inbox expecting a reply. Instead, she found a bounce message. When she opened it, the error said: “Sender address rejected, SPF Failed, not authorised.”

At first glance, it almost looked like the insurance company had not only failed to send the check, but had somehow blocked her emails as well!

Emma knows that the Fastmail Support is available to help, so she opens a support ticket with us. Since she’s already stressed about the issue, she’s not completely sure what details to include. She simply wants to let us know what’s happening and get help as quickly as possible.

We know it’s not always easy to know what to share with us to make sure we can help you out quickly. That’s why we designed Fastmail’s support ticket form to be more user-friendly and straightforward.

First, Emma entered her contact email address and name. If she had already been logged into her Fastmail account in the browser, she wouldn’t have needed to provide those details manually. We do encourage Fastmail customers to log in before submitting tickets because it helps us verify account ownership and safely discuss account-specific information when needed.

Next, Emma selected the category that best matched her issue: “Mail, Contacts, Calendars.”

She was then prompted to choose the type of issue she was experiencing, where she selected: “Trouble receiving or sending certain emails.”

After that, she was asked for the subject, where she entered: “Email to my insurance company bounced.”

A clear, descriptive subject line immediately helps us understand the issue and identify whether other customers may be reporting something similar.

Because Emma selected a mail delivery issue, the form then asked for additional details such as:

• Sender
• Recipient
• Date, time and time zone
• Was a bounce message sent/received? If so, please copy and paste the error here.

The form also included an area where Emma could describe the issue in her own words, and she responded appropriately to these straightforward prompts.

Sometimes an issue doesn’t perfectly fit the options available in the form, and that’s completely okay. We encourage customers to describe the issue as clearly as possible and include any details they think may help.

If an error message is involved, screenshots can also be extremely useful, especially if they include the full web page and URL. In many cases, understanding the exact steps that led to the issue helps us reproduce the problem more quickly. Screen recordings can be helpful too.

Providing technical details about the device and environment can also make a difference, including:

• Device type
• Make and model
• Operating system version
• App or browser version

After entering the information, Emma submitted the ticket.

Shortly after submitting the ticket, one of our support agents will begin looking into the issue. In this case, I had the opportunity to assist Emma with her concern.

As she had already included the sender address, the recipient address, and the complete bounce message as an attachment in her ticket, I was able to easily identify that she was having trouble sending an email to her insurance company and that the message had bounced back.

The headers she included in the message indicated that she was sending the email using an external address through Fastmail’s mail servers. This resulted in an SPF mismatch, which is why the insurance company’s mail server rejected the message. In this situation, the bounce was actually expected behaviour.

Since Emma had already shared all the important details upfront, I was able to quickly reassure her about what had happened and provide the correct steps to send emails from that address using the appropriate external mail server.

If she had just said, “I can’t send emails,” I would have asked for those details right away. That would have delayed the resolution, which can be stressful, especially when you need a fast resolution as Emma did.

Emma updated her settings based on my instructions and was successful in sending her message to her insurance company. She even sent us a lovely message to let us know that her concerns have been resolved. It was a delight assisting Emma!

Emma’s ticket is a great example explaining what details are required for an easy resolution. A detailed support ticket with a clear subject line and relevant information is super helpful in fixing the issue. It also helps us spot trends in the ticket, allowing us to promptly involve the appropriate team and resolve the issue before it impacts more customers.

One of the things we’re most proud of at Fastmail is the quality of personal support we provide to everyone — whether they’re long-time customers, trial users, or people simply considering the service.

Over the years, we’ve received many thoughtful messages from customers, which gives us immense pleasure and truly adds to the satisfaction we find in helping others. I would like to share a selection of positive customer feedback from the extensive list of responses we have received. For the sake of brevity, only a few examples have been included below.

“Thank you very much for the quick and excellent support. This is one of the reasons I love Fastmail. It took you only 12 minutes to reply again and specifically and perfectly answer every question I had on a rather complex topic. Stunning support, especially compared to what I experience with so many other companies. Definitely do share the praise with your team”.

"I think I should really thank you for the quality of customer support you and your team do. Whenever I talk to fastmail, you always know what you are doing, what you are saying, and what I am saying. (I found out not every support@ does that, hard way, this week.) So,appreciate that.”

"I just want to say, I’ve been impressed with the quality of the support responses I’ve received so far and how quickly the turnaround time has been. That’s always a good sign!”

"Your friendly support is appreciated and is part of why we have kept Fastmail for all these years!"

Choosing a few from the extensive list of customer feedback was not easy, and it was difficult to leave out many other thoughtful and encouraging responses.

Every support ticket tells a story, and the more context you can share with us, the faster we can help bring it to a happy ending.

If you’re ever not sure of what to share or what will help us troubleshoot, we’re always happy to walk you through that!

If you’d like to troubleshoot the issue on your own, our help center is a great place to start, and our support form now offers optional AI Instant Answers. We have dedicated help pages for the most commonly reported issues, including sign-up, access, billing, mail client setup, DNS records, and much more. It is kept up-to-date and written by the same awesome support team that answers your questions every day. As soon as a feature is released, relevant help pages are uploaded for the customers. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, no worries! Just give us a shout, and we’ll be more than happy to lend a helping hand. We’re here to support you every step of the way!

We hope this helps you get a speedy resolution the next time you need our support, and we’re looking forward to the next time we get to help you out!