topic Re: Managing Support in the Inbox in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Managing Support in the Inbox

LCunningham1 — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:49:39 GMT

We're into the 2nd month of using Hubspot service and the inbox for managing support. It's going ok, but one of the challenges seems to be managing the volume of responses alongside new queries and when to chase things up (we're managing the tickets from the inbox).

We've created views, but what the team seem to find hardest is when a client responds it can get buried in amongst other assigned tickets, and creating lots of viws makes it harder to manage the conversations. Ideally I'd be able to set up a view for any tickets that last response was within 'x' time frame and last response was by the client not the hubspot user - any ideas on how to do this?

Thanks

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

kvlschaefer — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 07:55:42 GMT

Hi @LCunningham1,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and for sharing your experience with Service Hub!

This is a great question 🙂

Let's invite our subject matter experts to this conversation to see if they have any ideas.

Hi @Jnix284, @HFisher7, @Franci - Do you have any tips for @LCunningham1's question regarding ticket views?

Thank you!

Best,

Kristen

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

HFisher7 — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:07:32 GMT

@LCunningham1 - Would it work to create an inbox view with the filter set as the Conversation property 'Last message received date' is less than X days ago..!?

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

LCunningham1 — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:30:58 GMT

I wish it did, but that view still shows anyone that's had a response from one of our team after their last message was received within that timescale, so it's not quite there with what we need for managing the volume of conversations, as ones with a response from us are intertwined with responses from clients. Ideally we'd just have a view that shows anyone who the last message was from them not one of our users.

I'm thinking this may need to be a pipeline stage of client responded with automation to move them into it every time a response comes in to build a view from this, as i can't see a way in the ticket or conversation properties to specify last message was from the client?

Thanks though!

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

HFisher7 — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:41:12 GMT

@LCunningham1 - OK, what about if you layer the 'Last message received' filter to include 'Last message from visitor' is equal to 'True'..?!

Failing that, with a Service Hub Starter or above subscription you can automate ticket status when a customer replies to an email. More info on that linked here.

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

LCunningham1 — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:55:28 GMT

Ah yes, filter is EXACTLY what i am after - you're awesome, thank you 😁

Re: Managing Support in the Inbox

Jnix284 — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 18:50:54 GMT

@LCunningham1 I'm glad @HFisher7 was able to help you find the view you're looking for to manage the replies that need a response so they don't get buried.

Since you're in the 2nd month of using HubSpot for managing support, I thought I'd share a few helpful tips that I use to manage the inbox.

Add custom ticket properties to track relevant data for open convrsations and set them as the default at the top of the about record for tickets so they are visible from the right sidebar in the inbox.

Use emojis in the dropdowns for the properties so you can very quickly assess the situation at a glance - for example, you could have a property to track documentation status (especially if you're using the knowledge base), it could be something like:

🔥 need new documentation

👩‍💻 requires update, inaccurate or incomplete

✅ documentation provided

Then you can create filtered views from Service > Tickets and even workflows that assign tasks to users related to the status of these properties.

I also recommend using emojis in your view names, it will make it a lot easier to pick the right one.

Another thing that's helpful to differentiate new from old is to set an SLA (if you're not already) - even if you aren't holding your team accountable to the SLA, it creates a warning and past due notice that makes it very easy to differentiate what's not been replied to yet:

Finally, I recommend coming up with a process for using Comments to flag what the next step is for any open items.

For example, if you're waiting on a reply or approval for something, you could flag it with your initials and status:

JN - pending confirmation temporary fix was applied

the comments are nice because it adds a yellow highlight to your conversation:

and because you've flagged the thread after your last reply, you can very easily visually discern what threads have new replies from the customer.

I hope these help you make the most of the inbox and improve your team's productivity, I love working in the inbox and am happy to help if you run into other questions!