Launching the new help widget - early access

Related products: Freshdesk

Hi everyone,


We’re super excited to launch a new version (beta) of the feedback widget this week. With the new help widget, you can:


  • Embed a branded contact form on your website or product.
  • Show solution articles wherever your users are.
  • Optimize for deflection, by guiding users to solution articles before they reach out to you.




And that’s not all. Beyond just a simple contact form, the new widget can actually help you understand when your customers are frustrated. 


For instance, if a button on your site isn’t working, and a customer is clicking on it many times hoping it’d work, the widget can popup and ask if they need help. We’re also planning to add more signals to determine if customers are frustrated on your website (like, when they scroll up and down a couple of times, clearly looking for something). If you’ve got ideas on more signals we can add, we’d love to know!


Over time, this widget will evolve to support bots, and provide options for you to include other channels (like chat) as well.



If you'd like to give the beta a shot, please leave a comment below. Just so you know, when we enable the beta: 

  • Your existing popup feedback widgets will continue to work, but you'll no longer be able to access the settings for it from Admin. 
  • Your existing embedded feedback widgets will work, and you'll be able to create new embedded widgets from a renamed section in Admin called Feedback form.


Shankar

Hi Shankar!

Unfortunately, I didn't receive your response about the Screenshot feature. 

Are you planning to deal with those things related to endless circles for all browsers (except Chrome)?




Vladimir, 


We currently use a screenshot library to generate those screenshots in browsers that are not Chrome.


We don't have control over the library. We don't plan to improve it. Thanks for understanding!


Wonderful job, how can we customize it (color, position, ...)? The "old" one had parameters in the build form




Hi Luca,


From the Blossom plan onwards, you can create multiple widgets and you can customize the color and position of each widget, Luca.


I understand you'd want to change based on page content, on certain pages (in case the widget is hiding something). 


Is there a reason why you'd want to customize the color of the same widget in different pages? 


Hi Shankar,


Can you enable the new widget for our account?




Hi Kevin, the feature is now available in your account. You can use Cmd+Shift+R (on Mac) or Ctrl+F5 (on Windows) to see Widgets in the Admin page.


Hi everyone,


In March 2019, we launched the new help widget. It was intended as a replacement for the popup feedback widget. Since then, hundreds of Freshdesk customers have tried out the widget, and have been using it on their websites. They've given us their ideas and suggestions, and we've been making several improvements since we launched.


The help widget is on par with functionality offered by the popup feedback widget. It's also customizable with your branding, has APIs for advanced functionality, a better screenshot option and more. You can learn more about these features here.


On March 31, 2020, we will be deprecating the popup feedback widget and moving all our customers to the new help widget. If you're already using the popup feedback widget on your website, you'll need to create a new help widget, and replace your existing popup feedback widget with the help widget.


The embedded feedback widget will continue to work on your sites. It will be renamed as 'Feedback form' in the Admin page. If you need help with replacing the popup feedback widget with the new help widget on your site, please reach out to support@freshdesk.com. If you don't see the help widget on your account, please apply for access by leaving a comment here in this thread.







Hi Shankar, we currently use the feedback widget and it has become a big source of our customer tickets. We have an automation set up to assign these tickets created by the Feedback widget to our staff account. Will we be able to set up the same automation with the Help widget? I didn't see it listed as an option as a Source.


Also is there a way to display the widget without clicking a button? In other words is there a way to embed the widget similar to how the feedback widget is embedded now?


Thanks!


Hi Cmerrell,


The source for tickets created using help widget will be 'feedback widget'. I understand this is confusing, we're thinking of ways to make this easy to understand. Your automation rules that depend on 'feedback widget' as source, will continue to work.


By 'not clicking a button' experience, do you mean a simple form that is part of your webpage, like the embedded feedback widget? 


Great to see all the updates you guys have added to the widget since we joined the beta! It's almost good enough to start using.

One critical feature we're missing before we replace what we currently use it his..

Right now, the widget shows a couple of suggested articles. We'd like to have control over which articles are shown, based on where the customer is at. So, let's say they're on a certain URL inside our dashboard, the suggested articles should be tailored to where they are.

So in other words... we'd like to add some kind of URL-based logic.

Is that on the roadmap? If so, do you have an ETA?




Hi Shankar! 

I wrote to you 2 bug reports last year and have no response. Could you, please, update me on this? 




Hello everyone,


Happy new year from all of us at Freshworks!


We recently launched some updates to the help widget that I wanted to let you know about.


1. When your customers click on a link or a button on your website, you can directly open a solution article in the widget and offer them contextual help, with the open article API. To learn about setting this up, please take a look at this API documentation or this solution article.


2. You can now show solutions articles that have been restricted to certain customers within the help widget. To learn more about setting this up, please take a look at this API documentation or this solution article.


Let us know what you think of these new features. We'll be happy to help you out!


Cheers,

Karthik


Hi @Info we're working on this. It should be out by March.


Hi Vladimir, I'm getting back to your emails today.


Hi! 

I know, that Shankar is gonna read this. Freshdesk support does not respond in tickets. Please, let them know about ticket 3918832 (7 months waiting) and 5360195 (24 days) waiting. I am waiting for the updates. Thanks for your help. 

Small question: could you provide a more exact date for functionality, which will allow us to set certain articles in the TOP 3 section in the widget? Last time you told me - it would be February.

Thanks. 




Hi Vladimir,


Give me a day to check on 3918832. I need to check with the PM who handles that part of the product on Monday, and get back to you. About 5360195 - give me a few weeks to prioritise this issue within one of our teams, and then I'll get back to you.


We're working on a feature using which you can set certain articles to show up on the widget, if the URL it's loading in contains certain keywords. You can possibly use that to customise the articles shown in the 'most viewed' articles. It's going to be launching in three-four weeks. I'll update here in this thread when we launch the feature.




Hi Shankar! 

Thanks for your attention to my inquiries. 

I have some more. Please, write the response in the same order. I Appreciate your time beforehand. 

1. I didn't get the point with adding the Article in the Most Viewed section. Do I understand right, that it would be a GUI functionality, where I will set up certain keywords and will have articles, where these words would be in the Article body? If so, why not just create a check-button in front of each Article in the list and by means of this check-button - determine wherever it is Top 3 article or not. If all checkboxes are unchecked - default behavior could be applied. 

2. We have demands to change some visual elements in the widget. 

a) 

image

Our American colleagues found that this English is inappropriate. It is better to use something more natural or even give us an opportunity to edit this field. 

As an option they suggest - "Need help?"

b) 

image


Could we make this field more than 60 symbols? 

We want to try something like this:

image


3. In this message chain, you told us that you will fix the issue with the User Name field, so it will appear in the custom widget form ( Show form with ticket fields) along with the classical widget form (Simple contact form). Right now we DO NOT HAVE "Your name" field in our form. Please, let me know about this as well. 



Please, let me know, what are you thinking about all this stuff. Have a good one!





Hi Vladimir,


1. You can go to the widget settings and click 'add URL'. You can then type arkadium.com and set the five articles you'd like to display in place of the most viewed articles. 


2. Yes, we do plan to get rid of the text 'Got questions' soon.


3. This isn't something we've heard from many of our customers. If we receive more requests, we'll consider increasing the number of characters. Would just saying "Thank you, we'll get back in 24 hours" work for you?


The name field appears in both the forms now. We fixed it recently. Please check and let me know if it works for you! 




Hi Shankar! 

Thanks for the response. 

1. It is working! Thanks! I am already using this functionality!

2. Would this question be replaced? Or just removed? Or it would be customizeble? 

3. Thanks for the information provided. Probably, you right. 

4. Now we have the Name field, but we are not able to control it - change position in widget. Would it be possible in the future? 




Hi Vladimir,


2. We're thinking about removing it altogether. I think having that line isn't essential for your customers to understand what to do next, when they open the widget. 


I think users intuitively understand that 1) they can search for articles, 2) look at one of the articles listed or 3) contact your business (and they would understand this even without seeing 'Got questions?')


4. The name field appears right above the email field. In Admin > Ticket fields, the email field is represented as 'Search for a requester'. When you move that field, both the name and email fields will move together.



Hello everyone,

We’ve been receiving lots of feedback from you about the help widget. We’ve just shipped some updates to the help widget based on your ideas. If you haven’t seen them yet, here they are:


Page-specific solutions

Show specific solution articles in the help widget based on the web page (URL) that your customers are currently on. You can read more about this feature here. For example, using this feature, you can show specific solution articles about pricing when your customers are on your pricing page.



Readability improvements

You told us about how your customers weren’t able to view your screenshots conveniently. Now, the images in your articles can be opened in a much larger area. When your customers read a solution article in the help widget, they can now open it in the portal. 


Also, when your customers read a solution article in the help widget, they can open the article in the portal on a new tab. They can then switch between these tabs to read the article on your portal and follow the instructions on your website.



Choose colors for the banner text and the button text

We heard from you that the text wasn’t legible when you picked specific colors for the banner and the buttons. You can now choose between black or white for the banner text color and the button text color in the widget.



Customer journey

The customer journey feature shows agents the solution articles that a customer opened before creating a support ticket on the portal or on the help widget (embedded on your website). This feature enables agents to learn more about a ticket before they respond to the customer. You can read more about this feature here.



2. We have demands to change some visual elements in the widget. 

a) 

 

 

 

image

Our American colleagues found that this English is inappropriate. It is better to use something more natural or even give us an opportunity to edit this field. 

 

As an option they suggest - "Need help?"

 

 

 

Hi, I have a similar request. Unfortunately this question in the widget can not be customized. In German, the question is "Haben Sie Fragen?" but we don't use the Sie-form, we use the Du-form, so we need "Hast Du Fragen?" - why is it not possible to customize this question?