Customer Profiles

Profiles in Help Scout are built automatically when a customer emails your support address for the first time. We'll also create a profile when you compose a new conversation on behalf of the customer. This article talks about editing and updating profile information.

Edit a Customer Profile

You can edit all profile fields right from a conversation — just click the customer's name in the sidebar — or click Customers in the top menu, find the customer, and click on their name. Changes made in the profile editor are saved automatically.

To access the full conversation history or start a new email, click Edit full profile. 

To delete a customer profile, see About Deleting Profiles for more information on what is deleted and the steps to complete it. 

Profile Fields 

The customer profile offers the following fields by default: 

• First Name
• Last Name
• Company
• Job Title
• Email 
• Phone
• Website
• Address
• Notes

The Notes field is a good place to add general notes, as those notes show up in the sidebar when you're working on a conversation. To add multiple lines of information to the Notes field, press Shift+Enter to create a new line. 

In addition to the default fields, your Account Owner and Administrators can create additional customer properties that can be populated manually or programmatically. See Customer Properties for more information on that feature! 

Automatically Populate Customer Profiles With Gravatar

Help Scout is Gravatar-enabled! This allows us to automatically populate Help Scout customer profiles with their Gravatar profile information associated with their email address, when such a profile exists. 

This integration with Gravatar enabled by default. Your Account Owner or Administrator can head to Manage > Company Settings > Edit Company and toggle the Enrich Customer Data switch off if you would rather not use Gravatar to populate your customers' information. 

Your customers have full control of their Gravatar profiles — you can direct them right to Gravatar to update or correct any information there. 

There is some housekeeping that you can do within Help Scout, such as removing their image by clicking on the trash can icon when you hover on their photo. You're also able to overwrite certain data, like the Company and Job Title. 

If you toggle Enrich Customer Data off after using it, any previously synced data will remain, but Help Scout will no longer connect to Gravatar for updates to existing data or to get new customer data.