Set up help desk

The help desk workspace is a central location where your team can manage tickets across channels. Connect chat, email, form, calling, custom, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger channels to consolidate your support process in one place.

From help desk, support agents can respond to tickets, prioritize issues, collaborate with teammates, and triage customer requests more efficiently. 

Set up help desk

If this is your first time setting up help desk, you'll be guided through a setup flow to help you customize the workspace.

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Help Desk.

2. Click Set up help desk. 
   
   

3. Follow the prompts to answer questions about your support team, preferred channels, existing tools, and default layout.

   Please note: for each selected channel, a test connection is created so you can preview how tickets will appear in help desk. No messages are sent to customers via these test channels. Test connections are not yet available for Calling, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger.

4. In the bottom right, click Create your help desk.

You will be redirected to the help desk workspace, which includes sample tickets that simulate real support interactions. 

Configure and manage help desk

After your initial setup, use the resources below to connect your live channels, organize your workspace, set up automation, create and respond to tickets, and report on help desk activities.

Connect channels to help desk

Before you can start communicating with customers in help desk, connect channels to create tickets from incoming messages. When you connect a channel, new incoming messages will appear in your help desk. If you’ve chosen to migrate existing conversations over to help desk when connecting a channel, historical conversations will also appear.

Please note: help desk is not yet available on the HubSpot mobile app. 

• Connect channels to help desk 
• Migrate an existing inbox or chatflow to help desk
• Set up a calling channel in help desk
• Sync and manage help desk tickets in Slack
• Sync and manage help desk tickets in Microsoft Teams.
• Sync and manage help desk tickets in Google Chat.
• Connect WhatsApp to help desk 
• Connect custom channels to help desk 

Organize help desk

Manage tickets efficiently by using the default views or create custom views. You can group members into teams to easily control what’s visible for each team. Customize the help desk sidebars so your team can efficiently manage tickets. 

• Organize teams and views in help desk
• Customize the right sidebar of help desk
• Customize views in the left sidebar of help desk
• Search for tickets in help desk
• Use help desk spaces

Configure your help desk settings

Set up your help desk settings to improve your team's efficiency and responsiveness to handle tickets effectively. You can direct tickets to the right agents, configure your working hours and set clear SLA goals. 

• Manage user availability for help desk
• Manage user out of office hours for help desk
• Set ticket capacity limits for users in help desk
• Set a default email address for teams in help desk
• Set SLA goals in help desk
• Turn on automatic transcripts 

Route tickets in help desk 

Manually assign tickets, or set up automatic routing rules so that tickets are automatically routed to specific users and teams in your account.

• Route tickets in help desk
• Route tickets in help desk based on agent skills

Create, respond and manage tickets in help desk

Help desk allows you to navigate between existing tickets and create new ones without having to leave the workspace. You can respond and manage tickets directly in help desk, enable automatic transcripts and, move and merge tickets. 

• Create and respond to tickets in help desk
• Manage tickets in help desk 
• Use reply recommendations in help desk

Report on help desk tickets 

Track and analyze your support team's performance over time. 

• Analyze help desk activities
• Use the help desk coaching page
• Create service reports in the service analytics suite