[SalesForce] How to interact with Salesforce Support effectively

There are times when the only way to resolve an issue is to deal directly with Salesforce Support, such as when you need to ask them to adjust a soft limit for an organisation.

This can be a frustrating experience (see What's more helpful than Salesforce Customer Support?).

  • When raising a support case, what approach is the most effective?
  • What information should I supply in the case notes by default?
  • Are there any steps I should undertake to speed the process up?

For example, when I've tried calling Premier support I've found they have trouble understanding my accent and the case notes they create are often incoherent. To be fair it may be my fault as a New Zealander, but I feel like a Scotsman in a voice activated lift.

I suspect there are other issues at play here as well. The client Org User records I often work in will be in another time zone, say Pacific Standard Time where I'm on NZ Standard Time. I'll end up exchanging case notes with support every 12 hours or getting a phone call at 8 pm. How important is the data in the user record that raises the case?

Best Answer

Here are the steps I usually take:

  1. When creating a case, always grant login access to Salesforce support for any orgs involved in the issue and state that in the case description along with the org ID of any orgs involved.
  2. If it's a coding issue, simplify the code as much as possible and re-create the issue in a clean Salesforce instance so there are less factors for support to have to rule out.
  3. Describe the issue as clearly as possible, only including pertinent information.
  4. Respond to Salesforce support e-mails and calls as quickly as possible. If you're lucky you'll catch them before they move on to their next case. Otherwise, who knows how long it'll take for them to respond to your response.
  5. Do NOT let the support rep close the case if you don't feel it's been resolved. If they do, ask them to re-open the case and if that's not done, create a new case asking for the old case to be re-opened, giving the old case number in the case details.
  6. Post the issue on the forums as well, you might get it resolved faster that way. In fact, that may be your only option now if you haven't purchased a higher tier of support.
  7. Post the issue here.
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