Release Notes: Fun Improvements, New Integrations, and Some Sneak Peeks
Release Notes is our monthly update that highlights recent product improvements we’ve made so you can easily stay up to date on what’s new.
What's new
Create new customer profiles automatically
When you use the Beacon identify call in Basic or Secure mode, we’re now automatically creating those customer profiles for you in Help Scout. No changes on your end are required! For more about using the identify method, check out the documentation.
Chat emojis ❤️
Emojis have come to chat within your Help Scout mailbox! Easily add an emoji during any customer chat using our new emoji picker.
New apps
Savio
The easier it is for your service teams to identify useful customer insights, the more likely they are to do it. Savio’s new Help Scout integration makes it fast and easy for Customer Service teams to tag particular conversations in Help Scout and make them instantly accessible to Product Managers.
Paperform
Create a beautiful new web form in moments, and turn every form entry into a conversation in your Help Scout inbox using Paperform’s new integration. Whether you want to connect a contact form, a registration page, a competition entry or endless other options, Paperform makes it easy to get those details right into Help Scout effortlessly.
Klaviyo
For ecommerce companies, Klaviyo provide a powerful platform to capture, analyze and automate their marketing. Use Klaviyo’s Help Scout integration to send customer information including Conversations started and closed, automatically from your Help Scout account into Klaviyo where you can use it to create more personalized and effective marketing campaigns.
… and more improvements!
Smarter email parsing: We’ve made it easier to distinguish between emails forwarded into your account, and those cc'd to your Help Scout inbox as part of an external conversation.
Simpler Slack integration: Now you can connect your account to Slack using OAuth, a faster and more secure method of integration.
Tons of quality improvements: This month we’ve made more than 59 fixes and improvements all across our platform.
Coming soon:
Chat with your visitors without asking for their email address
In the past, if someone began a chat and they weren’t automatically identified as an existing contact in your Help Scout account, Help Bot would ask for an email address. In situations where contact details aren’t needed right away, like a sales enquiry, it could be a point of unnecessary conversational friction.
Soon, you’ll see a new Beacon Builder setting which lets you switch off that email requirement. Once you flip the switch on any Beacon, visitors can start a chat without being asked for their details. If they do offer up an email address later, you can easily add that to their customer profile in a single click.
Look for this feature within the next week or thereabouts — if you’d like to receive an alert once it goes live, drop us a note! Thanks to everybody who shared their helpful feedback leading to this improvement.
Customer team roundup 💪✨
In support, little things can make a big difference — even seemingly small changes can save your whole team some precious time. In this section, we highlight the maybe-overlooked (but very powerful!) changes that are making our own customer champions cheer.
Up this month: Abigail, writing in from Boston
Using Reports to Improve Your Customer Self-Service
If you’re focused on customers seamlessly finding answers in your knowledge base, you’re probably old friends with our Docs report. While failed searches and top articles give helpful insight, it’s important to do regular audits of the queue as well.
In Help Scout, head to **Reports > All Channels > Saved Replies** as a first step. High Saved Reply usage might feel like a win for efficiency, but it means you’re making your customer contact your team when they could be finding the answer themselves.
Plenty of customer questions will always be queue-bound, but put as much focus on self-service as you can. It helps your customers get answers quickly, and it helps your team focus on the more challenging questions.
Elyse Mankin
Elyse leads the Product Support team at Help Scout, where we make excellent customer service achievable for companies of all sizes.
