Help Scout Hack Pack

27 tips and tricks to bring next level skills to your Help Scout game

We pride Help Scout on being intuitive and easy to learn, but there are a ton of useful tidbits hiding all over the app that can be tricky to find on your own. We’ve put together a cheat sheet of the most useful nuggets to bring pro skills to your Help Scout game. 

Conversations and Customers

1. Search by Tag without leaving the editor

Sometimes a saved reply will do, and sometimes a reply requires a little more nuance. Click on Tags in conversations to search how similar conversations were handled previously, without leaving the editor. 

2. Send a conversation on behalf of a team member

Training new team members? Have your newbies save responses as drafts for approval. You can send on their behalf from the Send options dropdown when it’s ready to go. 
It’s also great to send on behalf of a teammate if you spot a finished reply in the draft folder from a team member that has left for the day. Send on their behalf so your customer won’t wait for a reply, and you won’t steal their thunder.

3. Change where you redirect after a reply or note

Not quite ready to jump to the next Active convo once you’ve finished composing your reply? Change your default redirect from the Send options dropdown. 
  • If you collaborate with teammates by posting notes, assigning to different teams, or moving conversations to other Mailboxes, select Send and stay on page to avoid chasing your conversations once you have replied. 
  • If you’re in more of a supervisory role and like to check in on what’s happening in the queue after replying to conversations, Send and go back to folder might be a better direction for you. 
  • Or, just keep it as Send and next active if you’d rather run rapid fire through the queue!

4. Link to a specific conversation thread

Need to point out exactly when something went awry in a conversation? Link directly to a thread by grabbing the URL from the timestamp.

5. Save images in Saved Replies

Save Replies from the reply editor to include inline images or animated GIFs in your Saved Reply. To work with Help Scout's editor, please make sure GIFs are less 600px wide.

6. Start New Conversations from the Customer Profile 

Click on the customer’s email address from the left sidebar of their Customer Profile to start a New Conversation with that customer. 

7. Save a pre-filled subject for New Conversations

You can pre-fill the customer email address, Cc/Bcc lines, and subject line on the New Conversation page by adding a few things to the URL. For example, the following URL creates a new Conversation with the subject“Help Scout is the bomb”: 
<a href="https://secure.helpscout.net/mailbox/">https://secure.helpscout.net/mailbox/</a>[MAILBOX SLUG]/new-ticket/subject=help+scout+is+the+bomb
Just replace[MAILBOX SLUG] with your own Mailbox slug[EXAMPLE] and save it as a bookmark to use whenever you need to. Full directions here. 

8. Merge Customer Profiles

If a customer writes in from two different email addresses, you can combine the two into one profile and keep all of that customer’s history in one place.

9. Update conversations in Help Scout from your email inbox

Enable and reply to email notifications to update Help Scout conversations right from your inbox. Reply directly to reply to the customer from Help Scout, and use @commands to update the status, assignee, tag, or add notes. You can also forward emails from your personal address so your support team can reply to the customer instead. 

10. Follow up on Negative Ratings and Comments

Never miss a chance to follow up with a less-than-happy customer with a Workflow to notify teammates, or reactivate conversations with Negative Ratings.

If you have customers who like to ask additional questions in the Rating Comments section, you can also set Workflows to send email notifications or reactivate conversations for Rating Comments.

Productivity

11. Batch add replies or notes with Manual Workflows

Create a Manual Workflow with a Note or Saved Reply to batch add them from the folder queue view. You can edit the note or reply before committing to send, but it’s a great way to update a ton of conversations in bulk. You can even add a tag with it, too!

12. Tag feature requests to keep customers notified

Adding Tags for popular feature requests not only helps to keep an eye on the magnitude of customers asking for a particular feature, but it also helps to keep them informed when a feature is released. Create a Workflow for the feature Tag to send an email to your customers, and you’ll let everyone who sent a feature request know it’s available in one fell swoop.

Read more about our process for tracking feature requests and bug reports here.

13. Search * for a unified Mailbox view

Conduct a blank wildcard search by searching * to view all conversations across all of your Mailboxes. Use search operators like status:active or status:pending to narrow down the search results by status, and use the operator -status:deleted (minus status deleted) to keep deleted conversations out of your search results.

14. Batch remove Tags with Manual Workflows

Working on Tag maintenance? If you need to remove a bunch of Tags from a folder but you don’t want to remove the Tag entirely, wrap it up in a Manual Workflow. You can set up the Workflow to remove your tag and batch apply from the folder queue. It’s a lot quicker than clicking into each individual conversation.
More on Workflow conditions: Workflow Conditions and Actions

15. Set reminders with FollowUpThen

Want to set reminders for yourself on certain conversations? FollowUpThen is a super simple email reminder service that works nicely with Help Scout. Just include a time-based FollowUpThen email address like 5minutes@followupthen.com into the Cc or Bcc fields of your Help Scout reply. It’s free for up to 50 reminders per month!
Learn more about FollowUpThen + Help Scout here. 

16. Color code Tags

Add some visual organization to your queue by color coding Tags. Head to Manage > Tags, click on the Tags you want to color code, and a color menu appears. It provides a great visual queue for spotting urgent or specialized issues coming into your queue at a glance. 

17. Trigger Workflows from Beacon

Automatically Tag or assign conversations coming from certain Beacons without fancy API footwork by creating a Workflow. Here’s how to set it up:
  • Body > Notes Contain
  • Add text from the note that Beacon leaves for your condition. For example, if you wanted to catch every conversation that came from your Beacon named Sales Beacon, it would look like this:

This also works for teasing Beacon responses out of your Reports. Just tag for Beacon and use Reports Views to filter that Tag!

18. Copy Workflows to other Mailboxes 

Need to set up several Mailboxes with similar Workflows? You don’t need to create them all from scratch. Copy Workflows to other Mailboxes to quickly clone your Workflows to any Mailbox you need:

19. Specialize Auto Replies

Want to exclude certain email addresses from receiving autoreplies, or send a different autoreply when customers contact you from your Beacon than when they email you directly? Turn off your Help Scout Auto Reply and use Workflows to send autoreplies to your customers instead. Use whatever condition you would like to differentiate your autoreplies from each other, and use the action Send Email to the Customer.
For more detailed instructions on setting up Workflow, check out our Help Doc: Workflow templates and scenarios

Sorting and Organizing

20. Star Mailboxes on your dashboard

Have more than five Mailboxes? Star important Mailboxes to place them front and center on your Help Scout dashboard. You can star up to five Mailboxes for easy access on your dashboard.

21. Customer name sort

Sort by customer name to quickly identify and merge multiple emails from the same customer.

22. Conversation number sort

Tackle oldest conversations first by sorting by conversation number. Flipping on this folder sorting option ensures you serve customers that started a conversation with you first before new, incoming requests, even if the older customer gets a little follow-up happy.

23. Assigned sort

Delegate better with an eye on what your team members have on their plates by sorting from the Assigned column in the Assigned folder. 

24. Set up Folders for Aliases

Forward multiple email addresses into one Mailbox by setting them up as Aliases. Use a Workflow to automatically Tag conversations with the Alias name and filter them into custom folders so you know which Alias a conversation came from.

*If you are on the Plus Plan, you can use this Workflow to automatically assign Aliases to Team Folders to take them out of the unassigned queue. 

Docs

25. Search and add Docs in replies

Pop pre-formatted links to Docs articles in your replies by using the handy Docs search bar inside the conversation editor. If you have Docs installed, toggle the Docs search in the dropdown.

26. Use Internal collections to share Saved Replies across Mailboxes

Use Internal collections for any Saved Replies you need to share across Mailboxes. Since Docs content is accessible from the Docs search bar from any Mailbox, save the reply content in an internal collection and use the Insert Content button to drop it into the Reply Editor just like you would a Saved Reply. The editor will pick up any variables used. 
If you run into any issues with line breaks not being obeyed, we recommend adding in the following tags in the HTML section of your Docs article to help keep everything formatted correctly when inserting it into the conversation editor:  
Insert text here
<br> </br>
Here's some more text

27. Create Custom Navigation Links

Need to link to another web page on your Docs navigation bar, like a privacy policy page or a custom contact form? Just create a Collection for it! Name your Collection the name you want for the navigation link:
Then use our Docs Redirects feature to redirect the Collection landing page URL to the desired page URL:
A beautiful example of this in action is on the Restored316 Docs site. Click on Submit a Ticket to get redirected from the Collection page URL to their custom contact form. 
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