Tickets are indeed a great way to keep logs. This way if a customer had the same problem as another one before, you could go back into those logs and find out the quick fix.

You can also use the tickets as timestamps, when you have those customers who yell at you saying "It's been 4 days since I submitted a ticket!". You can go back to the tickets and find out what the problem might be.

HTH

I think tickets are the way to go so you have a record of all conversations between you and your staff or your customers so they cant say you said this but you never said it...

Email used to be alright, though MANY emails get lost or what not. Ticket system is actually the best way to go. This makes it MUCH easier for the staff to respond and view what needs to be taken care of at the time. I've also noted, I've gotten faster responces via ticket then email. I've used ticket systems for hosting earlier and it was more efficient for all the staff.

Forum's can also become a pretty good way of support. Although, It isn't as organized as a ticket system and you could possibly miss a thread or post, unlike the ticket system.

Without tickets we would have a very hard time keeping track of things as emails just get to messy. Replies are not always within the same email's and often get spread over many different emails which is harder to keep track of issues. As others have said get a helpdesk with full email pipping so you can do both. Email's automatically get turned into tickets..

Tickets!

For all the reasons already stated. I do agree, though, that the system also has to support tickets via email.

Tickets are more professional in my opinion, and are easier to handle compared to emails. One problem though, is that you need a login and password and things take a tad longer to do with tickets.

I guess it depends on the script though!

ticket system definitely the better way to go

I would say both, but definitely ticket support.

Why not both? Pipe emails to your helpdesk..

I think its much better support tickets, its more easy to manage, and more users prefer it.

tickets are the best a clients can't seem to figure that out as more than one person may look at there problem.

Tickets keep a good record the pipe forces them to use the ticket system

My choice would be using ticket. Unless there are some magical feature that our email can conjure later in the future, better stick with ticket. Its easier to manage, and good for you when you are trying to build up your own knowledge base template later.

While ticketing is nice, this doesn't mean that you should stop using email. Email is fine and some customer do prefer email over ticketing. There are some good tools out there that auto generate ticketing for any new email that reach your support/admin/etc mailbox. If you can use this wisely then you had save some of your precious time distinguishing between email, complaint and spam :p.

Ticketing system works best for me to keep a record of all my clients issues.

I prefer using tickets. They are more organized than emails.

I definitely recommend having something that involves tickets, but the best approach is to cover as many options as possible for the ultimate convenience of the customer, not for yourself.

A good hosting company should offer direct physical mail support (though no one ever uses that route), fax support, phone support, live chat support, email support, onsite ticket support, a thorough FAQ system, forum support, and anything else that you can think of to help the customer.

And it should all be integrated in an organized manner into a ticket system so that the customer can always check up on the status of even resolved issues of theirs and so that any of your support staff can review their entire issue history, even for seemingly unrelated issues.

The more you invest in supporting your customer, the more they will be willing to invest in supporting you, simply put.