To get a job performed effectively (or at the very least extra simply), you want the fitting software.
For instance, you may use a butter knife to tighten a screw. Whereas this would possibly work in a pinch, a screwdriver can be way more efficient and fewer prone to injury the screw, the knife, or the style of your PB&J sandwich when you’re performed constructing that cupboard.
As a member of the assist workforce right here at Assist Scout, I work with new and potential prospects within the queue every day, and it’s taught me so much about who advantages probably the most from a software like Assist Scout. When you’re the one one who can resolve if Assist Scout is the fitting software for you, right here’s the recommendation I might give somebody deciding if Assist Scout is an efficient match for his or her assist workforce.
Assist Scout works greatest when…
You assist your prospects utilizing a shared electronic mail.
Our shared inbox is supposed for use with a shared, customer-facing electronic mail handle. Consider [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] addresses somewhat than [email protected].
Should you’re utilizing private electronic mail to speak along with your prospects, you’re going to run into points at Assist Scout. Why? As a result of Assist Scout works by receiving assist requests which are robotically forwarded out of your electronic mail account, so electronic mail lands in your supplier inbox first (Gmail or Outlook, for instance) and is then despatched over to Assist Scout.
Should you join your private work electronic mail handle to Assist Scout, that implies that together with the client dealing with electronic mail that you just’d hope to deal with in Assist Scout, we’re additionally going to obtain all these inside emails between you and your teammates as effectively. You don’t need these inside emails touchdown in a shared inbox the place any of your coworkers may learn or reply to them.
Your customer-facing workforce is 2 or extra folks.
Should you’re a solo-prenuer or a one individual assist workforce, save your cash! A daily outdated Gmail inbox is probably going all you want for now. We’re right here for you if you’re able to scale issues up.
However for those who’ve obtained a workforce with two or extra folks supporting prospects, there are a variety of issues you will discover helpful in Assist Scout. Just a few options that our personal assist workforce leans on closely are:
Inner notes: We use notes to doc our troubleshooting course of, which is nice for future coaching and sharing information on a distant workforce. We additionally use the @mentions function, which lets you ping one other consumer or workforce in a observe on a dialog and ship them a notification with out having to assign it to them. The @mentions are nice for asking a teammate a query or leaving suggestions!
Groups: We use Groups to deliver different departments into our assist queue. For instance, we’ve obtained a separate Workforce for our advertising and gross sales of us. We additionally use Groups to assist function releases or specialised areas of assist the place a smaller subset of our assist workforce will work on specialised conversations collectively exterior of the on a regular basis “unassigned” queue.
Reporting: Now we have seven several types of stories to comply with in Assist Scout. These stories assist our management workforce perceive our workforce’s productiveness, and we take a look at these collectively every month. Personally, I additionally use the consumer report each day to maintain monitor of my very own productiveness and ensure I’m hitting all of my very own key efficiency indicators.
You need to centralize your assist perform.
We frequently see prospects fighting conditions like this: “Our assist workforce makes use of Gmail for electronic mail and a separate software for reside chat, our gross sales workforce is utilizing HubSpot, our customer-facing documentation lives in yet one more software, there’s no reporting, and we don’t have any visibility into what the workforce is engaged on each day.”
We don’t need that disjointed expertise for anybody! Assist Scout could be your single supply of fact and convey your workforce collectively to assist prospects in a single place. Just a few of my favourite options are:
Our Docs function which lets you create customer-facing documentation and create inside docs to function your individual inside wiki.
Our embeddable widget known as Beacon which lets you provide reside chat, a contact kind, proactive Messages, and entry self-serve choices like Docs.
For these instances if you do want info that lives in an exterior software, you’ll be able to make the most of our 100+ seamless integrations with in style apps like HubSpot, Jira, and Shopify.
Assist Scout may not be a match if…
You need to use Assist Scout for electronic mail internet hosting.
Should you’re simply getting your small business began, you may not have a customized electronic mail handle but. We aren’t in a position to host your electronic mail companies right here at Assist Scout, so that you’ll have to create your customized [email protected] electronic mail handle in a conventional electronic mail supplier (like Gmail, Outlook, AWS, and so forth.) earlier than you should use a software like Assist Scout.
Assist Scout works by receiving assist requests which are robotically forwarded out of your electronic mail account. So as to use an online primarily based assist software like ours, you’ll have to have your electronic mail hosted elsewhere as a primary step.
You’re in search of an inside communications software.
Assist Scout is supposed for use for buyer-facing communications. We’re the software you utilize to assist your prospects, distributors, companions or different exterior stakeholders. Should you’re in search of inside electronic mail or inside on the spot messaging, a greater software can be one thing like Slack or Microsoft Groups. Whereas it could be attainable to make use of Assist Scout for inside communications, we wouldn’t advocate utilizing Assist Scout to unravel this drawback.
You aren’t already supporting prospects.
Now we have an incredible startup plan, which lets you use our product at no cost for six full months! Nonetheless, one thing we see all too usually is that people will join the startup plan earlier than they’re prepared after which not use their free Assist Scout account till month 5 (or typically under no circumstances!). In case your product is simply getting off the bottom, maybe wait a month or two so to gauge what sort of quantity your workforce might want to assist.
We wish you to make use of Assist Scout to assist your prospects if you’re prepared, however there are a variety of bells and whistles inside a software like Assist Scout (or any shared inbox) which are in all probability overkill for decrease quantity setups. We need to offer you as a lot worth as we presumably can — don’t spend cash if you don’t have to!
Should you’re nonetheless feeling uncertain about if Assist Scout is the fitting match, come be a part of us for a reside class! Members of our Assist Scout assist workforce (myself included) give reside courses 3 times per week the place we stroll by means of the product collectively. Throughout these courses you’ll be able to ask questions and get an outline of Assist Scout’s options and performance.
There is no such thing as a absolute greatest product on the market, solely what’s greatest for you and your workforce at this second. Our objective is that can assist you delight your prospects, irrespective of which software you select.