Author: Jamie

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New Site Live! 1

Uncategorized • Tags: , , , ,

Drumroll please….

After battling a few delays and many long hours of work, we’re pleased to announce that our redesigned company and product sites are now live.

homepage

So, in a nutshell, here’s what you can expect from the new sites:

  • More refined, cleaner, look and feel. Having been a few years since our last version was created, it was time for a change!
  • Content for new customers. As mentioned under previous posts, we have an updated Tour, Getting started guide, and one page factsheet; all optimized for the prospective and new customer.
  • Easier to find content. Along with the new look we move important content around. For example, customer case studies/testimonials are more prominent than before. Our customers have great things to say about HelpSpot and are using it in some interesting ways, something we thought worth highlighting.
  • Quote generator. Prospective customers can now create their own quotes, just as we would provide to them. This should prove to be a HUGE time saver for us and just plain more efficient for customers. Now, instantly they can have a quote to take to management for purchase authorization.
  • New Domain. For those paying close attention, you’ll notice our old site was hosted on userscape.com. We’ve since broken out our content into 2 sites: helpspot.com (product site) and userscape.com (company site). Our founder, Ian Landsman, explains his thoughts around why we’ve done this in a recent blog post.

OK, enough blabbing on…go check it out already and tell at least 3 friends to do the same!   www.helpspot.com

Site redesign sneak-peek: the Tour 1

HelpSpotted, Sneak-Peek

While the redesigned helpspot.com is still under-construction, our new and improved tour is starting to take shape.

Just to give you a flavor of what’s to come….
peek

What’s new with the tour? Everything! Starting with the look/feel. Carrying over the fresh color palette and new style for icons and images from the rest of the site, the message of the tour will be delivered with a polished sophistication.

Content too has seen an overhaul. I grouped features, specific tools, and over-arching philosophies into conceptual areas to provide more of a narrative for those new to HelpSpot; designed to be a logical organization of the key points for those in the market for help desk software.

  • Manage: How will HelpSpot allow me to more effectively manage my customer service?
  • Work: Which tools will support my goals of efficiency and delivering great service for every inquiry?
  • Self-Service: A must to satisfy the growing pool of web-savvy customers.
  • Measure: Reporting to measure the good, bad, ugly and everything in-between.
  • Customize: Maximizing HelpSpot’s flexible framework to create a support management tool that reflects my business needs.
  • Developer APIs: No business app. can call itself complete without full integration with vital external systems; HelpSpot is no exception.

Remembering the ‘Customer’ in Customer Service Reply

Help Desk Theory

Going through some content as we port to the NEW helpspot.com design (sneak-peek to come…), I came across this article written by Ian, our founder, a few years ago. It’s great–although brief, it encapsulates our underlying vision of HelpSpot when we started and what continues to guide development and support.

Enjoy this oldie but goodie!

***********

At its functional core, HelpSpot is a help desk ticket system. Yet that label, ticket, never appears in the system. It’s one of the first things we choose NOT to do when designing HelpSpot. In our experience one of the major factors that separate a truly great help desk system from a merely average one isn’t technology, but rather a customer-focused attitude.

Sure having a great help desk ticket system with robust functionality is important, and we believe HelpSpot is, but it goes deeper than that. It largely comes down to the attitude conveyed towards the customers inquires. A bad help desk system almost always has a poor attitude towards incoming customer inquires. New ‘problem tickets’ enter the system and are viewed with disdain; as nuisances that need to be quickly closed in an effort to simply ‘clear’ the queue.

How do you distinguish this subtle difference in customer focus?

Start by thinking about the terminology for a moment. The word ‘ticket’ doesn’t express the importance of the customers inquiry nor does it adequately convey the care which is required to make a customer happy. More than likely the phrase ‘problem ticket’ conjures up images of working at a deli counter, where answers are churned out like a Reuben on rye. On the other hand HelpSpot uses the term ‘request’ which has a much different tone by providing a subtle emphasize on the importance of the interaction, rather than churning through the task at hand to move onto the next.

Also consider the supplemental tools brought to the customer experience. HelpSpot provides a customer portal complete with a searchable knowledge base, in the form of knowledge books, forums, and a means to submit and manage all open requests. Giving customers the tools they want and need, while allowing help desks to proactively address common customer concerns in mediums that customers find comfortable and easy-to-use. With the capability these tools bring for interaction between support staff and customers, help desks will be able to foster a complete community around their product/service.

Your Help desk staff don’t want to feel like they work in a deli, churning through an endless stream of faceless ‘problem tickets’ using a system that values the ‘ticket’ over the customer experience, as this lack of customer-focus will be quickly reflected in the level of service they provide. A help desk system focused on the customer interaction, like HelpSpot, will prevent even the best of support staff from falling into the ‘deli counter’ funk.

Hot off the press: HelpSpot Fact Sheet 1

Did You Know?, HelpSpot in the Wild • Tags: ,

Based on feedback from those in the help desk software evaluation process, we’ve created a 1 page fact sheet for HelpSpot. flyer

It’s a quick look at what we do, a sampling of who we serve and what they’re saying about us, and–of course–how to find out more about HelpSpot. We think it’s the perfect overview for those doing initial research to bring to team or management meetings.

Download and share with friends and colleagues!

HelpSpot Fact Sheet

Merging Multiple Requests from Workspace Reply

Sneak-Peek • Tags: , ,

Currently, you must be on the request page to initiate a request merge, while this will continue to be available, with the next release we’re adding the ability to merge multiple requests from the request grid (Workspace page).

Why add merging from the Workspace? Feedback from customers showed a clear need to more quickly group like-requests. Adding merging to the Workspace does this by saving staff a few clicks. 

See it in Action. It’s easy and only takes a few clicks. After selecting the desired requests, using the Quick Action drop-down at the bottom of any request grid in the Workspace (Inbox, My Queue, and any filter) select to merge and the receiving request.

Merging from Request Grid

Merging from Request Grid

Upon submission the page will reload with the merge complete.

Filter Condition: Relative Dates Reply

Feature Focus • Tags: , ,

Before getting into the good stuff, I’ll start with a quick and dirty Filter 101 for those new to HelpSpot.

Filters, in a nut-shell: HelpSpot’s filters allow for the creation of customized request views. These views, or Filters, are defined by the condition(s) that are set. HelpSpot provides over 35 different conditions that can be used in combination, joined by any/all logic, to create thousands of filter combinations.

Included in the conditions are two that allow for the filtering of requests based on Relative Date Opened and Relative Date Closed. For each, there is a drop-down containing pre-determined time frames that range from today to last year.

Below are the more common uses for Relative Date Opened/Closed.

Preparing for a Meeting. Using Relative Date Opened, the applicable time frame can be selected for pulling requests. This is best demonstrated through an example. Let’s say the Support Manager was preparing for a monthly meeting with the Sales Manager to review the requests they worked on behalf of the Sales group.

Defining Conditions (All logic used to join):

  • Relative Date Opened set to Last Month
  • Category is Pre-Sales Inquires (in this example this is how Sales-related requests are grouped, this could vary)
Using Relative Date Opened and Category

Using Relative Date Opened and Category

Don’t forget: As mentioned in a previous post, the results of this filter can be exported to Excel, formatted and brought as a hand-out for the meeting!

Monitoring Interactions with a Specific Customer. Every support desk experiences this: customers that need to be handled with extra care whether because of a need to meet an SLA or countering a past negative experience. In these instances, let’s see how Relative Date Opened could be used.

Defining Conditions (All logic used to join):

  • Relative Date Opened set to Today
  • Email is set to contain the domain of the customer to monitor (this will ensure any requests from this company are included)
Monitoring Requests for a Specific Customer

Monitoring Requests for a Specific Customer

With these conditions set, in the example above, the filter will show all requests opened today where the customer was anyone from the UserScape company.

Providing Feedback to Staff. For this use, Managers typically opt for Today or Yesterday as the time frame.  Valuable for managers looking to deliver timely feedback on Staff interactions with Customers; serves as a great training tool for new hires.

Defining Conditions (All logic used to join):

  • Relative Date Closed set to Today (or time frame as desired; dependent on frequency of review)
  • Assigned Staff person is set to desired Staffer
Staff Response Monitoring

Staff Response Monitoring

With these conditions set, in the example above, the filter will show all requests closed yesterday by Jamie Landsman.

Exporting Filters to Excel 1

Feature Focus • Tags: , ,

Did you know HelpSpot can export filter data to Excel?

 Working with data from HelpSpot in Excel you can more easily:

  • Create graphic representations of filter/report results for presentations.
  • Share HelpSpot data, using a familiar tool, with those outside of the system.
  • Aggregate filter/report data with other external data
  • Work with a view of data that is easy to manipulate for printing.

Because how you choose to manipulate the data for presentation, once out of HelpSpot, is highly dependent on the reader, let’s take two real-world examples.

Creating a Request Snapshot

In our first example, let’s say a support desk manager must provide the department director with a look at all open requests as part of a weekly meeting.

To start we created a filter where the condition is set to show all open requests. We also included the last updated date column. With the filter saved we access the filter and used the export to Excel icon at the bottom of the request grid, as shown below.

Exporting to Excel Icon in Filter Request Grid

Exporting to Excel Icon in Filter Request Grid

The data exported into Excel will look similar to what is below. From here it can be formatted (adjust columns, bold headings, etc.) for presentation to the director.

Filter Data Exported From HelpSpot
Filter Data Exported From HelpSpot

Providing Summary Data

In our second example, we’re looking to create a couple of high-level summary graphs for inclusion in a quarterly management report; namely: Requests by Category and Number of Customer Interactions to Resolution.

We started by creating a filter that tracks all requests that were closed within the fourth quarter; representing those worked during this time period. We’ve also added the category and number of public updates columns to the request grid so that data can be exported for each request.

Once we have our data-dump, as obtained in our first example, we created pivot tables to aggregate the desired data for graphing. 

Grouping by Request Category

Creating Chart: Grouping by Request Category

 

To create a chart to reflect the number of customer interactions to resolution, again a pivot table was used. However, since most of the interactions were below 10 a sub-grouping of  ranges was created for a more concise, easy to read graphic.

Number of Customer Interactions Required for Resolution

Creating Chart: Number of Customer Interactions Required for Resolution