In the previous post, we looked at how we set up the self-service portal for Freshservice and other Freshworks products. We were all set to launch the portal with knowledge base articles and forums but decided to give it some more time.

While we had good self-service content on the portal, we knew some of our customers would definitely want to reach out to our team for specific questions they had. We had to have a form using which customers can submit questions when they don’t find what they’re looking for, or needed additional information.

The missing piece: customized forms

We decided to enable the ticket form on our portal but there’s one challenge we had to deal with. Since we support multiple products with the same Freshdesk account, we had a lot of fields, each relevant for different product support teams. For example, we had multiple dropdowns that helped agents categorize the issues, when they work on them.

Our customers shouldn’t have to worry about these things - they should just be able to submit their question and move on. We decided to have a simple form across our product portals. We just chose to make the email, description, and the subject fields visible in the portals by using the ‘Display to customer’ option in Admin > Ticket fields. 

Here’s how the form appears in our product portals today: 

Freshdesk has an inbuilt ticket form that enables users to connect with support teams. You can customise your ticket form in the Admin -> Ticket Fields section 

If you’d like to customize the form for each of your product portals, you can go through this forum post to see how you can accomplish it. You can do this if you’re subscribed to the Estate or Forest plan.

Routing questions to the right agents

We had different groups handling support for different products, and we had to ensure questions reached the right group. Tickets coming in via the Freshservice support portal had the product set as ‘Freshservice’, and we routed these questions to the right group using Dispatch’r.

Once we launched our self-service portal, email channels, etc. for Freshservice customers, tickets started flowing in. 

You can create custom roles in your Freshdesk account in the Admin -> Roles section. The role and scope defines the agent’s access to different parts of the helpdesk like tickets, contacts, reports, admin settings, etc 

Beyond ticket forms: completing the loop

By handling multiple mailboxes, showing customized help content and ticket form in each product portal, we were able to provide a very tailored experience for different customers. 

With customer journey, our team is also able to see solution articles someone read when they raise tickets. This, along with direct feedback we receive in solution articles, helps us go back and improve content if it isn’t good enough. All of our agents have access to editing  the knowledge base - and whenever feedback comes in, we try and make the content better almost immediately. 

With incoming questions and teams organized by product, we’re able to efficiently report on trends and go back to the development team and work with them on prioritizing fixes and improving experiences. 

References:

1. Customising the ticket form in Freshdesk
2. Quick guide to setting up agents and groups
3. Know your customer journey in Freshdesk

If you've got some interesting stories on how you're using Freshdesk in your organisation, share away.

Cheers!