3 steps to organizing and optimizing your Help Scout account

Now that you have your email flowing freely into your Help Scout Mailbox, the next three steps will keep everything running smoothly, both in the queue and behind the scenes. By the end of these three steps, you will:

  • Organize and track trends on conversations
  • Build your perfect support super suite with the tools you know and love
  • Set your customers up for self-service success

Basically, all the reasons Help Scout likely caught your eye in the first place.

Step 1. Track and organize conversations

We know why Help Scout caught your eye, and it’s all about making life easier for you and your support team. The good life starts with good tools. We have several tracking tools in Help Scout. The two most popular are Tags and Folders.

When should I use a Tag?

Apply Tags any time you want to group or categorize conversations for reporting or tracking purposes, or if it would be helpful to get a visual indicator in the queue for a specific type of conversation coming in.
An example for when to use Tags are for feedback or feature requests, helpful to track the volume of the request for product roadmap purposes. You can also use Tags to trigger automatic Workflows, which means you can follow up with all of the conversations tagged when that feature is released.
Learn how to manage Tags: Add and Manage Tags

When should I use a Folder?

Use a Folder any time you want quick and easy access to a particular group of conversations. Folders are better for time sensitive groupings like priority, or conversations you want to track accomplishment on, not just track in reports.
Examples of when to use Folders are things like conversations that have been waiting over X amount of time or conversations that might have received a negative customer satisfaction rating and need follow up.

When should I use both?

Any time you have something time sensitive that requires immediate attention that you also want to track the progress on long term.
Examples of this include VIP customers or urgent conversations.

How can I make all this less work?

That’s the best question of all, my friend. Once you’ve got a couple of Tags and added a Folder, explore Workflows to get repeatable tasks out of the way with some simple automations: Getting started with Workflows.
Here’s a couple of Workflow templates you can use to inspire you on ways to make your life easier: Workflow templates and scenarios

Step 2. Set up Beacon and Integrate your favorite apps

Create your Beacon, create as many Beacons as you want in fact! Beacon is a widget that you can embed to help your customers - with live chat and quick email in to your team, proactive Messages out to your customers, and Docs articles all served in one tiny corner pocket. Add Beacon to your Website or App, and you're on your way. 

Connect the all the rest of the dots, .com, ly, .io, and more! Help Scout plays nicely with many of your favorite Apps, or you can build custom integrations to pull in information from your internal CRM or CMS. Here are a few integrations we offer and how you’ll find them useful:

  • Phone: Manage voicemails from several popular providers, or connect a call center software like Aircall or TalkDesk if you need something more robust.
  • CRM: Sync your sales and support efforts by connecting your CRM to Help Scout conversations. Capsule and Pipedrive are the most popular.
  • Slack: Our most popular integration by far, and really in a league of it’s own. Bring incoming conversation into a Slack channel for immediate alerts, as well as customer satisfaction ratings and comments. It’s essential: Slack
  • Ecommerce: Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Get your customer’s order information connected to every Help Scout conversation. That’s what we have in store for your store.
  • Custom Apps: Maybe Todd in IT hacked together some internal management system years ago, or Beth in ops found a perfect CMS solution for you a little off the beaten path. Connect with all the oddball internal systems or anything your heart desires with a Custom App: Build a Custom App. Custom app development will require a little coding know-how and might need a lot, depending on what you want to do, just a heads up. 

Step 3. What’s up, Docs?

The secret to offering speedy support is a well stocked knowledge base. Why? You have all the ingredients for success at both your customers and your support team’s fingertips. If knowledge is power, a knowledge base is your key to the kingdom.
This video overview covers everything you need to know to get your Docs site up and running:
Ok, you got us here…this step takes more than 20 minutes as a great knowledge base evolves over time. Use Reports to see what customer’s are looking for in your Docs or what Saved Replies makes your team sound like a broken record to inspire new documentation.
Once you’ve got a couple articles in your Docs, your team can use the Docs search bar to easily share with customers in replies.

But wait…there’s more!

Once you’ve got these steps under control, there’s plenty more to explore in Help Scout. Set up Beacon to give customers help where they need it most, set up Office Hours to filter reports, or start seeing results with your customers using satisfaction ratings.

Continue your journey with Help Scout by checking out our Docs site or reaching out to our helpful customer success team to hone your Help Scout experience.

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