Help Scout for Local Government

Strong communication and knowledge sharing is essential for local and state government offices to effectively carry out their multitude of responsibilities. Whether there are tasks such as fielding daily questions and concerns from your constituents, collaborating within your agency, or liaison assistance across other government agencies, having tools that support your office’s ability to effectively communicate and provide accurate information will allow you to carry out your work in a consistent and timely way. And most importantly, help your residents to the best of your abilities. 

A tool like a shared inbox allows your various offices to keep overall awareness of resident needs, all in one place. Regardless of the way you’re receiving communication, these conversations can all be handled in the same shared inbox. You may have a contact form on your government website and its form submissions can be pointed into a Help Scout inbox. If constituents emails directly, such as to an address like council@ or parks@, their emails can also arrive into the same inbox. Phone calls can be logged in the inbox as well, as a way to have written summary of what was discussed.

With all your constituent communication now in Help Scout, you can use certain features in the app such as tags and custom fields to help you to properly categorize conversations and take appropriate action.  Organizing your conversations can help you spot for trends in what is being requested by your constituents over time. 

You may also find it helpful to redirect conversations to particular staff members by assigning emails to a specific person or team. You can even have multiple shared inboxes in one Help Scout account, and easily move emails across those different inboxes. By organizing and redirecting conversations as needed, you will be able to have a big picture sense of the needs of your communities which can inform future policies and decision-making, while making sure to get their concerns in front of the proper offices. 

Your staff can also make use of features that will help them work efficiently and effectively. Productivity tools like saved replies are helpful for procedural answers which could make up a bulk of the work. Instead of typing out the same response to frequently asked questions, you can respond to an email in just a few clicks.

AI-powered email responses through a feature called AI Drafts which learns from past email replies can help teams to generate quick responses as well. And if your staff needs to loop in with other staff members before sending out an email reply, they may collaborate within the group by using notes, a useful tool for internal discussion.

Given the wide variety of questions and requests your offices handle, having access to a website where people can get help for frequently asked questions can help both your constituents and your internal staff find consistent answers and information. 

You may receive a wide range of inquiries on topics like housing, public works, water services, and parks and recreation. A public facing knowledge base is one that your constituents can access and find instant answers to their questions at anytime, without needing to contact your offices directly. 

In Help Scout we call this Docs, and it can be helpful to share information like processes and guidelines, policy information, application forms, and other details that will help your constituents get the answer they need. 

Similarly, an internal knowledge base can help your staff have information they need to answer questions accurately and with consistency. This is useful for keeping internal processes and information that your staff should know, but is not necessary for public view, on hand. Your staff can quickly reference this documentation to provide your community with the best help possible and send back answers in a timely manner. 

When residents need help or to get in contact with you, they most likely do not know your department’s email address, so they will go to your website. There is a tool within Help Scout called Beacon, which you can use to provide wide support to your constituents. 

It is an embeddable widget that offers a way for communication via a contact form, shares your knowledge base articles, and even has a feature that serves as an AI-powered agent that can answer questions. This feature, called AI Answers, determines its responses based on your existing knowledge base and any extra web sources like pages of your website, as well as past email interactions. 

Embedding a Beacon on your website and offering residents a fast way to find answers in your help articles or interacting with the AI-powered agent makes it easy for people to get help without contacting your offices. This saves you and your offices time to focus on more complex projects and actions that serve and support your communities, while allowing your constituents to get the answers they need, when they need it.