HelpSpot Tour: Help Desk Request Tracking

HelpSpot Tour: The Request

1. Customer Information

For data security purposes, HelpSpot stores only the most critical information about your customers. However, when additional customer information is needed, HelpSpot provides a powerful Live Lookup API that enables you to easily integrate HelpSpot with other IT systems. Live Lookup can also set custom fields, if configured to do such.

HelpSpot also allows staff to search the system for any requests submitted by the customer, or even other individuals from the same organization, so they can be aware of any current or past interactions.

2. Request Notes

Notes provide further detail or communicate specific messages to the customer, HelpSpot staff, or external resources. Any response to a note, by customers, staff members or external resources will be automatically integrated in the request history.

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Note Types

HelpSpot is defaulted to send/receive HTML emails. As such, Staff can use the MS Word-like editor to stylize notes or opt to use a formatted text mark-up that HelpSpot will convert into HTML for sending.

Public Note—These updates are request comments that will be emailed to the customer as well as available on the customer portal.

Taking a Closer Look
An in-depth look at the customer portal can be found in the portal section.

Additionally, others can be included on these updates using the cc and bcc options.

Taking a Closer Look
Visit the integrated email correspondence section to see how these interactions are incorporated in the request history.

Private Notes—Allows staff to make notes within the request that are only viewable to those with staff access to the request in HelpSpot.

External Notes—If it's necessary to reach out to other external resources, staff can do so without having the customer included on the update. As with public notes, there is the option to include a cc or bcc. The following tour section shows how these interactions are integrated into HelpSpot.

For all note types, HelpSpot has a auto-save draft feature that prevents work from being lost in the event you leave the page before submitting.

Note Tools

Available for each note type is a variety of time-saving tools, such as:

File attachments—attached files are sent via email and are made available in the request history.
Notify—in one step, push email notes to selected HelpSpot accounts as well as the intended recipient.
Knowledge Book link—without leaving the request page, insert a link to any published knowledge book page.
Prepared Response—for those common requests, append a pre-defined prepared response to the request note.

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3. Request Details

Each request must have a status, category, and staff assignment. Because HelpSpot requires each request be assigned to only one staff member at a time there's no confusion about who's going to handle a request as often happens in queue based systems.

4. Category and Assigned To

The 'Category' drop down will only display only those categories a staff member has been authorized to work. By each staff member listed in the 'Assigned To' drop down, there will be the number of requests currently assigned as well as an indicator for the default category owner.

5. Reporting Tags

Instead of an elaborate tree of categories often required to generate meaningful reports, HelpSpot uses a flexible reporting tag structure. After selecting the requests category simply check off the reporting tags that are appropriate for the request. Reporting tags are not only key in generating reports but serve as valuable criteria when creating filters in the workspace.

6. Custom Fields

Companies data collection needs differ, so custom fields provide a critical means for flexible data collection. The added association with a category ensures your Staff and/or customers only see custom fields pertinent to the request.

Ten different types of fields are supported-allowing for the flexibility to collect the data most meaningful to your organization.

Predefined List
Text Field
Large Text Field
Checkbox
Numeric Field
AJAX Select List
Date
Date/Time
Regular Expression
Decimal

Sample Usage: We've added a yes/no checkbox and an operating system drop down, to be collected with each request. We selected to include these fields on the self-service portal; making one required.

7. Options: Printing to Merging

For each request there are optional actions, as shown below. Among them include:

Merging—Allows for the moving of one request into another without the lose of any interactions.
My Note Drafts—Apply one of your saved note drafts with the click of a button.
Push Request—Using HelpSpot's API, push selected request information to another application (such as bug tracker or CRM).
Trash (Administrators only)—Right from the request page a request can be trashed.

8. Request History

As notes are added, and information changes, HelpSpot keeps a full history of the events. Colors and icons are used to highlight the flow of events; Green is used as a background for all public notes making them easy to spot and the user selected icons display with the note. Histories are in reverse chronological order to easily review the most current update.