On this collection, we’ll offer you a peek behind the scenes to see how the Assist Scout assist group makes use of Assist Scout ourselves!
Whereas personalised assist is a trademark of Assist Scout, saved replies give us a stable basis to work from to be able to talk effectively, constantly, and precisely throughout our group. We consider saved replies as items of a puzzle we snap collectively — they include data that may be inserted as one part of an e-mail after which expanded upon.
Let’s take a more in-depth have a look at some FAQs about how we handle and use our saved replies.
When will we create saved replies?
There are a few conditions that immediate us to create new saved replies.
When there are new options
As we put together to roll out a brand new function, we take into consideration all our completely different channels of speaking with prospects about it. Our advertising and marketing group focuses on getting the phrase out to ensure our prospects know in regards to the function, after which our assist group creates Docs articles and saved replies to ensure our prospects know how to make use of the brand new function efficiently.
Saved replies are useful for the in-between time after we’re validating whether or not or not data is required in Docs. Maybe we expect there can be questions round what we’re launching, however we’re not fairly positive what number of of us could have them.
Elyse Mankin
Director of Product Assist
Forward of launching SupportAgent.ai, we created only one saved reply that contained hyperlinks to extra details about every of the AI options we’re creating, together with SupportAgent.
When there’s team-wide friction
If we as a group are typing the identical data time and again and it’s not an excellent match for a Docs article, we’ve the liberty to go forward and make it right into a saved reply. Saved replies are used team-wide, so snippets we like to make use of as people stay in our personal private snippet enlargement instruments like Alfred or TextExpander.
For instance, the keyboard shortcut to insert “Kristi from the Assist Scout assist group right here!👋” lives in Alfred on my laptop. In the meantime, we’ve created a couple of dozen saved replies about SupportAgent since releasing it to our prospects. The character of those saved replies are extra conversational than what we’ve included in Docs. They’re based mostly totally on the highest function requests we’ve heard in addition to on frequent factors of confusion our product and engineering groups are working to enhance.
As with all free trial, some of us stick to SupportAgent and a few don’t, and we need to perceive why!
We needed to have the ability to constantly collect data to cross alongside to our product group. The best option to get your group to ask the identical set of questions is to create a saved reply. Generally it’s nice for customers to ask questions in their very own phrases, however when gathering particular suggestions like this, a saved reply can take out quite a lot of that guesswork and interpretation.
Chrissy Chavez
Technical Assist Specialist
What goes in saved replies as an alternative of Docs?
Docs are supposed to be the illustration of how all the pieces is predicted to work, what steps it’s worthwhile to take to perform the standard operations that the majority prospects can be utilizing, and a few basic use-case data.
Melanie Shears
Technical Author
Bugs and hacks
Saved replies are useful for helping prospects with identified issues or workarounds to lacking options. We don’t promote bugs or limitations in our Docs, however we do need to have significant conversations with our prospects in regards to the ache factors they’re operating into in order that we are able to present them with the perfect short-term resolution attainable whereas internally advocating for long-term product growth.
Edge-case data
Our prospects have a variety of technical data. Generally a software program developer will contact us with complicated questions associated to our mailbox API, CSS for Docs, or customized apps. We’ve obtained some helpful code examples in our saved replies that we are able to share upon request, however these would create extreme noise and potential confusion for the overwhelming majority of our prospects who don’t want or need this data on our Docs website.
Docs are a positive steadiness between too little or an excessive amount of data, particularly extraordinarily technical information or particulars which might be particular to solely a handful of shoppers.
Elyse Mankin
Director of Product Assist
Inside communication
Saved replies are nice for working throughout groups. For instance, we’ll use one after we need to get that first contact out to the shopper about an bill after which loop within the finance group to help.
Cameron Mitchell
Senior Technical Assist Specialist
What pointers will we observe?
Do:
Write clear, concise content material that may be inserted as one a part of a personalised e-mail.
Use easy-to-read, bulleted lists for processes and directions.
Embed hyperlinks to Docs articles or different assets throughout the textual content.
If there’s a associated Jira card, add the problem key to the top of the saved reply title.
Replace the group in Slack when creating, modifying, or deleting a saved reply.
Don’t:
Use idioms, slang, unusual abbreviations, or technical jargon.
Make product growth guarantees.
Embody greetings or sign-offs.
Use sales-driven language.
How will we manage saved replies?
We at the moment have over 300 saved replies, so it’s essential to maintain issues organized. Similar to the examples in our Docs, we begin the title of every saved reply with the class or function of Assist Scout it’s associated to and observe that with a selected description. This makes it fairly easy to go looking and skim to search out the saved reply we’re searching for.
Beforehand, it was solely attainable to go looking the titles of saved replies, which actually restricted the outcomes we’d discover. In our new Inbox expertise, we are able to now search all the physique of saved replies.
In case you’re prepared to offer Inbox a strive, be taught extra right here.
How will we audit saved replies?
As our product evolves, so do our saved replies. This implies a saved reply that’s helpful at this time may not be wanted six months from now. We don’t observe any particular schedule, however we do a saved replies cleanup roughly yearly. If our saved replies are beginning to really feel a bit cluttered or outdated, anybody who’s obtained the bandwidth to sort out the undertaking is welcome to dive in!
Do you know? We are able to ship you an export of your saved replies! Simply contact our assist group.
My final audit went one thing like this:
Exported all saved replies.
Reviewed essentially the most used saved replies within the All Channels Report.
Deleted about two dozen saved replies containing information that’s not related.
Shared a listing of all deleted saved replies with the group in Slack.
In case you by accident delete a saved reply somebody on the group needs to maintain, you may copy/paste the contents into a brand new saved reply from the export supplied by our group or from an previous dialog the place it was beforehand used.
How will we use saved replies?
We usually use Saved Replies as only one a part of an e-mail to a buyer reasonably than as the total physique of the e-mail. We don’t append greetings or closings to our saved replies, so that they’re straightforward to pop into any part of a reply we’re crafting.
Our objective is to make sure our prospects are receiving correct and clear data inside a personalised response. If a teammate has already despatched a specific saved reply to a buyer, we’ll make certain to not ship it once more.
Saved replies give us a stable basis from which we are able to construct a whole and useful response that’s catered to every buyer’s distinctive use case.
Able to dive into your individual Saved Replies? Try our Docs article, “Create and Handle Saved Replies for Quick Solutions,” to get began!