Release Notes is our regular update that highlights the recent product improvements we’ve made so you can easily stay up-to-date on what’s new.
Do you smell that? Introducing the world’s first scratch and sniff webpage! Just kidding. But seriously, our Engineering team has been cooking up something magical, and it’s nearly ready for consumption.
As you may know, we’ve been hard at work on an all-new version of our Beacon product, which will include an optional live chat feature.
First, we previewed Beacon’s new features. Next, we wrote a post about how chat works in Beacon. Today, we’re going to talk about what it’s like to manage customer chats in Help Scout.
This is what it looks like:
Principles We start every project with a list of principles and/or constraints. The chat UI in Help Scout is the biggest project we’ve ever worked on, and we couldn’t afford to mess up the approach. While features will evolve over time, we have to get the principles right from day one.
So we took our time. We talked with hundreds of customers and non-customers. We spent a couple of months trying a bunch of different ideas, user-tested them, and then decided on the following principles:
1. Chat has to be a first-class citizen. Help Scout has always been an email-centric product. Seven years ago when we did the research, we found that email was typically the first channel that support teams had difficulty scaling, and we focused 100% on solving that challenge.
Over the years, one thing that surprised me was the adoption of messaging/chat products as a company’s first customer-facing support tool. A lot of companies today are adopting these tools before they implement anything for email support.
It’s clear to us that chat isn’t an add-on or a “nice to have” — in some cases, it’s the most important tool for businesses to talk with their customers. For this reason, Beacon and chat will be a core part of all our Help Scout plans. Chat gets all the same treatment and emphasis that we give the email channel.
2. Design a chat-specific UI and make no compromises. Other tools take the omnichannel approach and put all conversations from different channels in the same queue, or at least the same UI. In our experience, this results in a sub-optimal experience that can’t ever be optimized for a single type of conversation.
Help Scout’s UI is built for email support, and we like that. When it came to building chat, we started from scratch and designed something that works perfectly for synchronous chat-style conversations. With the exception of the customer sidebar on the right, it’s all different.
One key difference between the channels is that email is more of a one-at-a-time thing, whereas with chat, you often end up handling multiple conversations at once. In the chat UI, we introduced a sidebar that includes a list of all the conversations you should be aware of, and you can toggle between them in a single click.
And not to worry — the email experience in Help Scout has remained untouched. All of the new elements you see here are specific to the Chat folder in your Mailbox.
3. Convey the urgency customers are feeling. The chat sidebar (see above) is distracting, and that’s intentional. In my previous posts, I’ve talked a lot about managing customer expectations. Every second counts when it comes to making customers happy over chat. When customers are waiting, we’ve introduced in-app notifications and a “waiting” state that’s meant to get your attention:
Don’t need the distractions? No worries — you can set your status to “Unavailable” and the Chat folder disappears. Now you can focus on other tasks and rest assured you aren’t leaving any customers hanging. When no one else on your team is available either, chat will automatically disappear from Beacon as an available option.
4. Account for context-switching. One important decision we made was to bundle chat with an existing Help Scout mailbox. This works well for some logistical and technical reasons, but more importantly, it allows Help Scout users to easily context-switch. You can move between the email folders and chat folder seamlessly.
Another advantage of this approach is that you still have a single Closed folder, and whenever a chat ends, it becomes a conversation just like any email. You can reply to a closed chat and send the customer an email to continue the conversation.
Chatting with customers The center column is where the conversation takes place. While we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel with how that works, you’ll see some familiar Help Scout features, such as Assignee, Tags, Notes and Saved Replies.
I have a couple favorite features so far. The first is Notes. We’ve made it so that only the Assignee can send messages to the customer. If another user pops into the chat, they can only write Notes. It’s a great way to collaborate with teammates in real time without making a mistake.
One of my other favorites is the conversation summary. Chats can get long in some cases, and catching up on what happened or what the next step is can be time consuming. We’ve tried to solve that by introducing the summary: When you close a chat, Help Scout pops a modal asking you to type in a summary of the conversation. You can also change the Status or Assignee if you’d like:
Once you hit the Close Chat button, the chat is turned into a transcript and added to the relevant sidebar folder (Closed in most cases). Your summary is added as a note up top, so the next time someone opens the conversation, they can read your summary and instantly be up to speed on what happened.
If you use Help Scout every day, you’ll be happy to know that the customer sidebar is included in every chat. You’ll have instant access to your customer’s previous conversations, custom app data, and any other integrations you have installed. We kept the customer sidebar exactly the same.
What’s next Excited yet? We are too! Next month I’m going to share another preview, which will address some of your most common questions regarding the launch date, pricing, and other FAQs. To be clear, we haven’t made any final decisions on that stuff, but we will in the near future.
Checking boxes can never fully capture the complexity of our identities. To build an inclusive company culture, however, we need to understand how people from all backgrounds feel about their workplace, so we have to ask the questions.
It’s been just over a year since Help Scout last conducted our first demographic survey and shared the findings publicly.
Last year’s survey was enlightening: Our company, then about 60 remote people, had moved closer to gender parity — 59% men, 41% women and non-binary people. We’d increased the representation of women and non-binary people on our Engineering and Design teams, but it still sat at 13%, and overall as a company, Help Scout was 81% white.
While we still had room for improvement in many areas, we were proud to share our results along with our strategies and learnings as a way to hold ourselves accountable, to add meaningful dialogue to what’s happening around diversity and inclusion work, and to demonstrate our company’s dedication to doing better.
Now in August 2018, we have new data and insights to share and continue the conversation.
Don’t forget the ‘I’ in D & I
Meaningful diversity work is more than just representation and numbers.
While increasing representation of underrepresented groups is a major focus for our company, it’s meaningless if we don’t all feel like we are supported and included. To that end, we added three questions to this year’s survey since it’s essential to know how people from all backgrounds are feeling about their place at Help Scout:
I feel like I belong at Help Scout.
I can be my authentic self at Help Scout.
When I speak up, my opinion is valued at Help Scout.
We wanted to collect this data to identify whether particular groups felt that their voices were being heard and whether they believe they belong at Help Scout.
We also added a few new demographic questions to learn even more about our company. After asking about living with a disability in our 2017 survey, we received feedback that the question could be even more clear — so this year, we asked a standalone question about whether respondents identify as neuroatypical, and another separate question about living with a physical disability.
To get a better sense of family status, we asked our team if they identify as a parent/legal guardian.
Last year’s survey asked respondents whether they identify as “male, female, or trans/genderqueer.” After getting great feedback from the comments on the blog post pointing out that trans people can identify as male or female, we made necessary and more inclusive improvements to that wording. This year we asked if our team members identify as a “man, woman, or non-binary,” along with a separate question about identifying as a transgender person.
The results are in
We had 72 teammates respond to the 2018 survey, our largest data sample yet.
New insights
Thanks to the aforementioned new questions we added to the survey, we learned that 14% of Help Scout identifies as neuroatypical. By asking the question and sharing the data, we hope to help reduce the stigma around mental health and plan to conduct trainings around supporting our neurodiverse team.
We also learned that 35% of our team identifies as a parent/legal guardian, a data point that reinforces the importance of meaningful work-life balance, and why we love the flexibility of remote work.
We were also stoked to learn Help Scout is 18% LGBQ. Awesome.
Wins
We moved a bit closer to gender parity, at 57% men and 43% women and non-binary people.
At the time of last year’s survey, zero teammates identified as Black/African-American. This year, we’re at 3%.
We maintained 50/50 gender balance at the manager/team lead level.
And on our Engineering-Design-Product teams, we moved to 26% women and non-binary people, a 62% increase from the past year!
And it’s important to note that while someone might belong to one majority group, they may also fall in another minority group. Again, identities are complex and a survey can’t navigate intersectionality in all its variations — it can only serve as a data point in a multifaceted and ongoing conversation.
How did we get there?
Publishing last year’s blog post helped us attract candidates from underrepresented groups by speaking candidly and honestly about our diversity and inclusion. Our own Chanita Simms recently wrote about how that post impacted her journey to Help Scout.
While many companies still hesitate to share demographic data for fear of being open about their shortcomings, we can’t stress enough how important it is to own it and talk about it. Being transparent and authentic helps build an employer brand that attracts the kind of team you want to build.
After two years of surveys, we now have concrete data to show that the changes we made to the recruiting process were absolutely leading to an increase in women on our Design-Engineering-Product teams. When we launched the search for a new Head of Design, we experimented with adding honest language to the job description:
P.S. - Yes, it’s all dudes. Although we work really hard to build a diverse pool of candidates, we’ve fallen short of our diversity and inclusion goals on the Design team. We’re excited to partner with you to do much better moving forward.
That search, along with a heavy dose of sourcing and recruiting excellent women candidates, resulted in hiring the best person for the role, Linda Eliasen. The data show that when women are better represented in leadership roles, more women are hired across the board. The results on our Design team reinforce those findings — our once 100% male Design team is now 42% women.
‘I belong at Help Scout’
One of the most exciting findings from the 2018 demographic survey came from analyzing the data from the three new questions around inclusion. For each question, over 80% of the company agreed or strongly agreed that they felt like they belonged at Help Scout, they could be their authentic selves, and their opinions mattered.
When the data was spliced to see how underrepresented groups (who historically haven’t felt as included and welcomed in tech) responded to these questions, their responses were actually higher!
What we’re still working on
Over the past two years, Help Scout has remained static in terms of overall race, at 82% white. Considering that we’re a remote-first company unlimited by geography when we hire, we could really be moving the needle here. We have no sugar-coated rationales or excuses. We’ve simply not done enough, and we need to have some difficult conversations about next steps and strategies and will have more to share next time.
We also surveyed the team and asked what they’d like to learn more about, and many responded that they want to develop more strategies to combat unconscious bias, so we’ll be planning another training very soon. We also want to organize a training to learn more about the barriers and biases for people with different physical and mental abilities in tech.
We’ve added more private Slack channels around identity groups:
#whoruntheworld — For those who self-identify as women, genderqueer, or non-binary
#Rainbowscouts — For those who self-identify as part of the LGBQT community
#POCscouts — For those who self-identify as a person of color
These function as remote versions of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which boost feelings of inclusion among underrepresented people in companies.
In the months to come, we’ll be setting new goals, continuing our recruiting and sourcing efforts, and continuing to encourage our team to expand and diversify their networks. This work is never done, and we look forward to sharing our progress in the spirit of openness, humility and transparency.
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. The season of Beacon is upon us. What’s Beacon, you ask? Maybe it would help to explain it in terms of bacon…
If you’re eager to learn more about behind-the-scenes Beacon updates, read our latest Beacon blog post.
WHAT'S NEW 🚀
Huzzah sticker pack
Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re familiar with Help Scout’s huzzahs. If you’ve reached inbox zero in a Mailbox, you’ve seen ‘em. Some (amazing) people have even dressed up as huzzahs for Halloween!
Our product support team getting in the Halloween spirit today! 🎃 @helpscout, recognize those icons? #inboxZero
7:14 PM - Oct 31, 2017 21 See Panorama Education's other Tweets Twitter Ads info and privacy In an effort to spread more huzzah joy, we thought it was about time to create a huzzah sticker pack. If you head to the App Store on your phone and search for “huzzahs,” you’ll find 24 downloadable stickers. Press the “Get” button, and you’re off to the races.
Need to text someone a piñata to remind them that they’re the life of the party? What about a donut? Everyone deserves a donut. Just think . . . a trophy sticker could turn someone’s stressful Monday morning into a “heck yeah, I can do this” kind of day. Huzzahs to the rescue.
