Being a professional as technical support can be quite conflicting, we are supposed to help them as much as we can, and sometimes they ask for a feature that really isn’t possible. Most of the time we are able to figure something out but there are cases where the customer needs are just too vague or out of scope. If you aren’t able to picture it I’ll add a scenario that I once answered.

Some context first. I currently work professionally as a support engineer for https://rymera.com.au/ specifically for the wholesale suite plugin, this means I tend to deal with custom code requests or customer requirements that our plugin is capable of doing.

Customer: I’d like a feature or know how I can generate reports for wholesale customers

Now, our plugin at the time doesn’t have a module or feature that generates woocommerce sales reports for wholesale customers. If you think about it even if you theoretically could code it up do you think it’s within the scope of a technical support engineer? If you say yes, let me dip you in cold water to freshen you up :D, no but seriously this would require to actually change the code structure or add hardcoded lines to the plugin, this is not support anymore It’s programming where it’s the engineer’s job.

So then you might think “Okay then how do you reply to the customer”? Simple really, gently say NO IT’S NOT POSSIBLE SORRY

In most cases, I would simply say I’ll raise a feature request with our development but aren’t able to provide any ETAs when this feature will be available. It works most of the time because it helps you keep track of the request, which removes feature integration guessing which is one of my key skills. If it gets enough requests just ask your manager or the developer’s head if it’s possible to be implemented in the feature as a lot of people want it.

This makes the software a whole lot better because your customer already uses the program but wants something that’s not there yet. I can’t stress enough that numbers speak for themselves it’s nice to actually work on something that the people want. Happy customers = better reviews = sharing with their piers = more sales, tell me if you were the CEO is this, not the goal?

Right, hope this gives you some insight. Good luck with your tech life