We are pleased to announce that our new and improved balena support system will go live during the weekend of 6th/7th January 2024. Our aim is to increase control and flexibility, offering an even more seamless and efficient support experience, and to ensure our customers receive timely and effective assistance when they need it.
Recognising the Need for Change
As balena has grown and evolved we’ve made various incremental improvements to the way we deliver value through customer support. While the systems we’ve used to date have served us well, we’ve found ourselves in a position where our internal support infrastructure has become somewhat fragmented, and worst of all, we’re unnecessarily restricting access to valuable features for some of our users.
Our Current Support Structure
Depending on your balenaCloud paid plan type, support is currently accessed via a chat widget in the dashboard, by email, or through a support help center. These channels have all been facilitated by different software, and we’ve built internal processes to consolidate tickets into a single location from which our team manages your requests.
The Future of Balena Support
We spent many hours brainstorming how we can improve the current system. We explored various solutions, including building our own (we wouldn’t be balena if we didn’t at least consider it!), but we eventually agreed on Zendesk. We’ve used Zendesk (alongside multiple other tools) for several years now, and we believe their product offers the features and functionality that both our agents and our customers need to succeed.
With the implementation of the new system, we are moving towards a unified support solution that will provide a more integrated way for all balenaCloud customers on a paid subscription to access support, with Production and Enterprise users continuing to access faster SLA response times for high-priority and urgent tickets.
The balena forums will also continue to provide a community-sourced support platform for users on both free and paid balenaCloud subscriptions.
Support-Driven Development Lives On!
Rest assured, the changes we’re implementing will only affect the tools used to deliver support to you. There will be some changes in the way you access support, but, most importantly, your tickets will continue to be handled by the balena engineers and team members who build our products. Our philosophy and approach to support-driven development very much lives on!
Accessing the New Support System
There are three main channels through which you can access support:
The New Support Help Center
You can access the help center either directly by visiting support.balena.io or via a link within the balenaCloud ‘Need help’ menu in the dashboard. Access to the help center is via SSO, using your existing balenaCloud account, so there is no need for additional credentials, and once logged in you can create, view and manage all of your ticket requests, plus access additional support resources. Users who are members of multiple paid balenaCloud organizations can also filter ticket views by organization, and organization-level visibility (which allows all members of your org to view and participate on any ticket within an org) can be enabled upon request.
The balenaCloud Dashboard
We are replacing the existing chat widgets within the Need Help menu with a streamlined contact form, as well as a link to the new help center. This form is a convenient way to create a ticket from anywhere in the dashboard.
You can create a new ticket by sending an email to [email protected]. Tickets created this way will default to normal priority, for high or urgent requests please use the contact form in balenaCloud or the help center, and select the relevant priority level. If you are a member of multiple balenaCloud organizations, tickets submitted via email will be assigned to your default organization, but can subsequently be moved to another org from the help center.
Ticket Updates
You will receive an email notification for every new ticket created, and whenever an agent responds or adds comments to an ongoing ticket (regardless of which channel the ticket was created through), you can then either visit the help center or reply directly to those emails in order to continue the discussion.
Access
In order to access the help center you need to be a member of a balenaCloud organization with a paid subscription. You also need to have a balenaCloud user account that has a registered and verified email address. You will see a notification in the Need Help menu informing you if you need to add and/or verify an email address. If you have trouble with this please email us and we’ll assist.
What Happens to Open Tickets?
Any tickets that are open when we launch the new system will automatically be migrated. You will be able to access these tickets by logging into the help center at support.balena.io.
We’d Love to Know What You Think
We welcome and encourage your feedback on our new support system. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us through support, or contact your balena customer success manager.
Start the discussion at forums.balena.io