Help Scout Hack Pack

21 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 inboxes, 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. Start cew conversations from the customer profile 

Choose Email Customer then select the inbox from the Customer Profile to start a new conversation with that customer. 

6. 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 best: 
https://secure.helpscout.net/mailbox/[INBOX-SLUG]/new-ticket/?subject=Help+Scout+is+the+best
Just replace [INBOX SLUG] with your own inbox slug and save it as a bookmark to use whenever you need to. Full directions at Create a Conversation With Pre-filled Data.

7. 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. See Merge Duplicate Customer Profiles for more help.

8. Update conversations in Help Scout from your personal email

Enable and reply to email notifications to update Help Scout conversations right from your personal email. 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. 

See Respond to Email Notifications to Take Action in Help Scout for the full details.

9. Follow up on not good 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 not good 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

10. Batch add replies or notes with manual workflows

Create a manual workflow with a note or raved 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!

All of the details here: Manual Workflows

11. Tag conversations you want to follow up on later to keep customers notified

Adding tags to conversations that you might need to follow up on later — like feature requests or stock outages — allows you to quickly reach out when you're ready to update anyone who contacted you. Create a workflow for the tag to send an email to your customers, and you’ll be able to send out all the emails at once.

12. 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

13. 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!

14. 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. 

Find more about tags here: Create and Manage Tags

15. 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 report views to filter that tag! See Use Views to Filter Reporting Data for more.

16. Copy workflows to other Inboxes 

Need to set up several inboxes with similar workflows? You don’t need to create them all from scratch. Copy workflows to other inboxes to quickly clone your workflows to any inbox you need.

17. 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.

Learn the ropes: Automatic Workflows

Sorting and Organizing

18. Customer name sort

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

Sort by any header in a list view by clicking on it.


19. Set up folders for aliases

Forward multiple email addresses into one inbox by setting them up as aliases. See Forward Email Aliases to an Inbox for more on how to set those up.

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 or Pro plan, you can use this Workflow to automatically assign aliases to Team Folders to take them out of the unassigned queue.  More about Teams here: Create and Manage Teams

Docs

20. Search and add Docs in replies

Pop pre-formatted links to Docs articles in your replies by using the handy Docs search inside the shortcut menu in the reply editor.

21. 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 a redirect in Docs to redirect the Collection landing page URL to the desired page URL. See Create and Manage Docs Redirects for more.

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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