Helpdesk (Ticketing)

Tidio's Helpdesk system offers a convenient solution for efficient customer query management. By moving time-consuming conversations to tickets, you can effectively manage your team's work. This article will guide you through the setup and usage of the Tidio Helpdesk system, helping you optimize your customer support workflow.

In this article, you'll learn:

• The benefits of using Helpdesk
• How to connect your mailbox
• How to add your custom signature
• How to send emails from your own email address or domain
• How to set an automatic response 
• How your visitors can create a ticket when you're offline 
• How to block emails 
• How to manage tickets (responding, sorting, SLA)
• How to ask for a rating and collect feedback
• How to add tags to tickets

Helpdesk Benefits

Manage your Time

Move time-consuming conversations to tickets to save the efforts of handling complaints, queries, and requests via chats. Change tickets' statuses and keep your inbox squeaky clean.

Create an Omnichannel Support

Offer your customers more ways to interact with you. Omnichannel support connects the experiences across different channels, making the customer experience completely seamless. 

Set Priorities for Your Tickets

Assign the priority to the tickets based on the SLA policy.

Cooperate With Your Colleagues

Assign the tickets to the team members who are best-suited to handle them. For example, a ticket with pricing questions can be assigned to an agent with relevant sales expertise. Create a team of ticket owners responsible for resolving them in the shortest turnaround time. 

Add Notes to Improve Communication 

Help your coworkers out by sending them notes regarding the case.

Connect your Mailbox

To start using the ticketing system, you'll need to connect your mailbox first. You can connect your mailbox by heading to Settings > Helpdesk section in your Tidio admin panel.

You can read more on how to add your external mailbox in our article about Forwarding emails to Tidio. 

Once inside, hit the Connect mailbox button to start the process:

You will see a popup with more options. Here, you can choose an existing email address that you'd like to connect:

In the next step, you will get detailed instructions for setting up the connection. You can select from several most common providers (e.g. Gmail) and see all the necessary steps, or use the Other mailbox provider option - and get your Tidio forwarding address immediately:

An alternative option you get when connecting is to create a new email address - with the @tidio.xyz domain. This can be useful if you just need an address quickly, and it's an address you can share with your customers or use it for forwarding to other mailboxes if you wish.

Once added, each mailbox will be listed in the Mailbox tab, along with its verification status (and instructions, if applicable):

If you have the mailbox connected already, skip this step. All the emails that arrive in your external mailbox will create a ticket in Tidio. You can find all new tickets in the Unassigned folder under the Tickets section in your Inbox panel. 

When multiple mailboxes are integrated, you'll find the original mailbox that received the email listed under each ticket:

Adding your signature to tickets

Each operator can add their own signature in Settings > Helpdesk as well. See the Custom signature tab there; you can enable the signature and modify it.

You can add text, multiple images, use basic text formatting as well as hyperlinks.

Please note: there is currently no way to add custom coding or change the overall format of the signature. The text can only be modified in the ways provided, and the images can only appear vertically (although you can place them at any point of the signature in general).

Send emails from your own address (or domain)

To improve your credibility, you can start sending emails to your customers from your own email address. You can also connect and verify your own business domain and use that for an even more professional look and improved deliverability.

Using your own existing email address

To do that, navigate to Settings > Helpdesk and open the Sender address tab. Click on the Add sender address button on the right:

You will see a popup asking for more information; here you can either select your own domain (if you've already connected one - more on this later!), or an existing email address of yours. This address can (but doesn't have to be) an address you've already connected with your Helpdesk earlier:

Type in the address you'd like to use and finish the verification process by providing the code sent to your mailbox:

Once you're done, you can keep adding more addresses to the list and pick the default one. They will become available to select as your default sender address (alongside any custom-domain addresses you may have added as well):

You have the option to choose the sender address for each ticket from a dropdown list:

Using your own domain

You can also use the recommended option: Own domain. This allows you to set up your own DNS records and increase the deliverability of your tickets! For each domain you add and successfully verify, you can add custom aliases as well. To allow this, you first need to connect your own domain.

Head over to Settings > Domains:

... and use either the Connect automatically or Connect manually button there:

The automatic method may be much smoother for you, so it's a good option to try first. This method is powered by Entri, which can assist you in connecting your domain in a few simple steps (as long as your domain provider is supported by Entri, which you can check here).

Once you select this method, you will be asked to provide the domain you'd like to connect:

Next, the domain will be analyzed for all the relevant details - all in order to allow a secure and smooth connection. During this process you will be asked to input your provider login details, in order to properly allow Tidio to connect with your domain. You will most likely need to confirm the connection request with a security code sent via email.

Once you successfully verify everything that's necessary, you will see a confirmation screen:

You will then see your domain listed in the Domains section, with the appropriate Status label showing you the current state of the connection:

Once the domain is verified, it will become available for you to select when adding a new sender address in Settings > Helpdesk. In the popup, you will be able to create an alias to use with this domain as well:

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Please note: even if you're using your own sender address for ticket communication, there may still be situations in which your customers will see the internal Tidio address generated specifically for your account (instead of your selected sender address). That internal address is your Tidio project's unique reply-to address, ending with the @ticket-tidio.com domain.

 

• This reply-to address is only visible once the customer wants to reply to your email. It is not visible initially; your sender address is.
• This only takes place if the ticket was created from inside your Tidio panel (this includes tickets created manually from scratch; tickets created from live conversations; tickets created automatically by the Lyro AI chatbot). Tickets created from incoming customer emails (forwarded from a connected mailbox) are not affected by this.

For more details and troubleshooting, please take a look at our article on connecting your own domains here.

Automatic Response 

If you wish to automatically answer each incoming email (ticket), you can set the automatic responses. To do that, navigate to the Automatic response tab in Settings > Helpdesk. 

You can enable automatic response by enabling the toggle and setting the message below it. Once it's ready, don't forget to save it! 

Let visitors create a ticket when you're offline 

When you're offline in your Tidio panel, you can give your visitors an option to create a ticket. This feature enables you to show your visitors a short message that can explain you are offline at the moment and encourage them to create a ticket for you through a form built into the Tidio widget. 

You will see all tickets later in the Conversation section of your Tidio panel. 

Blocked Emails

Managing Tickets

In this section, we describe the following aspects of managing Helpdesk tickets:

• Using folders (responding, forwarding, leaving notes)
• Creating tickets from scratch
• Ticket statuses
• Creating tickets from chats
• Sorting and filtering tickets (by date and status)
• Creating custom Views
• Service-Level Agreement (SLA) policies
• Merging tickets

Ticket Folders

All the tickets forwarded to your Tidio mailbox will be shown in the Unassigned folder with the status Open. 

Next to each ticket, you'll see the following information: 

• the ticket's subject
• the sender's email address
• the ticket's priority
• the creation date
• the last update time
• the ticket ID
• the assigned operator 

Click on the chosen ticket to open it. At the top bar of the ticket, you can see (and change) the current assignee, status, and priority. You will also see several other options there: mark the ticket as spam; merge tickets from the same sender (if any such tickets are available); block the sender's email address entirely; and the option to delete the current ticket.

When you're viewing a ticket, you can respond to it directly, leave an internal note, or forward the ticket to another address. You can see these different options in the lower half of the ticket, where the typing window is located (and notice that you can also use the additional Cc and Bcc options on the right, if you need to add more recipients):

Direct email responses

Using the Email option, you can compose a regular response which is sent to the recipient(s):

Internal notes

By selecting the Internal note option, you will be able to leave a note which is only visible to any operators who view the ticket:

Forwarding tickets

Cc and Bcc

Creating a ticket from scratch

To create your own ticket from scratch, click on the Create a ticket button next to the tickets folder list:

Inside the ticket creation view, you can specify the following:

Ticket Subject

A summary of the ticket content in the form of a short sentence.

To (the recipient's address)

The email address of the person who will receive the email (you can add additional addresses using the Cc and Bcc options - which allow you to forward the message to either visible or hidden recipients).

From (your sender address)

The email address you're using to send this message (you can use the default Tidio domain, or one of your own addresses, if added already).

Priority

You can set the priority to Low, Normal, or Urgent. 

Assignee

The operator responsible for handling the ticket.

Ticket message (text input)

The content of the email; this is where your actual message is created. Please note that you can add basic text formatting, hyperlinks, as well as Canned Responses () and file attachments ().

Internal note mode 

Switching this on in the bottom-left lets you compose a private messages that customers will not see. Internal notes are visible only to the operators viewing the given ticket.

Statuses

To send the email - click on the blue Submit drop-down menu to choose the correct status of the email. You can send the email as:

Open

The default status for all the new tickets created. If an operator is assigned, the assigned operator will see the email in the My Open folder. If no operator is assigned, the ticket will show up in the Unassigned folder. 

Pending 

Pending status means you are awaiting a response from the customer. When the customer writes back - the status changes automatically to Open status.

Solved

This status means the ticket got closed, and you're not waiting for more responses from the customer. The ticket will appear in the Open folder if the customer writes back. 

Creating tickets from chats

You can also create a new ticket from the chat conversation panel. To create a ticket during your chat conversation - click on the Create a ticket option in the upper-right of the conversation: 

You'll see a window allowing you to create a new Ticket. The system will automatically fill in the email address of the visitor. Of course, you can add more recipients using the Cc/Bcc option, if you wish:

Sorting and filtering tickets

In each Tickets folder you can sort all the tickets inside either from the newest (at the top) to the oldest, or from the oldest to the newest. You can see the option at the top of each folder:

This can be very useful when you have a larger number of tickets to handle, and you'd like to organise your work based on the date of the tickets.

In addition to the sorting option, the My open folder also offers an additional feature: filtering the visible tickets by status. You can see the option in the top-right of the folder:

This allows you to see all the tickets, only the open tickets, or only the pending tickets inside the folder. Naturally, filtering is not available in the Unassigned folder (since all the tickets there are always open), nor in the Solved folder (all the tickets there are always solved).

Custom Ticket Views

Using custom Views is a great way to organize your communication, and you can use that for tickets. Creating your own views will let you access specific types of tickets quickly, and you can base the views on many different conditions and filters.

Please see this comprehensive guide on creating custom ticket Views for more details.

Service-Level Agreement (SLA) policies

Adding Service-Level Agreement (SLA) policies allows you to set timeframes for your operators' response times for tickets. This lets you set a standard and become more efficient with your services, as operators will become more conscious of their own response times. In turn, it can help you track your team's efficiency with incoming email traffic.

To learn about SLA policies and how to use them in Tidio, see this article.

Merging tickets

When you receive multiple separate tickets from the same user (the same email address), you get the option to merge them all into one single ticket. You can do it either straight from the Unassigned folder or the My Open folder.

First, you need to find the tickets you'd like to merge - and select them. Tick the box that appears next to a ticket when you hover your mouse over it, and then keep selecting the other tickets (from the same user):

Once you've selected all the right tickets, click on the Merge button at the top:

You will see a new window, with all the selected tickets listed. In this step, you need to choose which ticket will become the main ticket from now on; all content from the other tickets will be moved to the new ticket, in chronological order, and only one ticket will remain. Click on the Merge tickets button when you're ready:

Once merged, you will see the resulting ticket in your folder - and all of the other tickets' content inside:

One more feature that can help you merge tickets efficiently is the Merge into button in the upper-right of a ticket. It will become active when you're looking at a ticket and Tidio detects that other tickets (from the same email address) exist in your Tickets inbox. You can use the button to quickly merge the current ticket with another ticket of your choice. You can avoid searching for them manually!

Once you click the Merge into button, you will see the same popup window as described above - listing all available tickets for you to merge the current ticket with.

Customer Satisfaction rating and feedback

Whenever a ticket is closed (solved), you can send an automated satisfaction survey via email. This is enabled by default, and can be managed via Settings > Customer Satisfaction. You can learn about the Customer Satisfaction tool in more detail here.

Enabling and modifying the survey email

The Customer satisfaction tool allows you to ask for a rating on a scale comprised of 5 options (emojis). You can decide about the amount of time after which the survey will be sent. Of course, you can modify all the default texts for the survey email as well.

Here's an example of what such a satisfaction survey email may look like on the customer's end:

If the customer clicks on one of the ratings in the email, they will be taken to a separate landing page, where they will have the option to leave an additional comment:

Checking the survey results

You can later check the effectiveness and satisfaction rate in the Analytics section, which you can learn more about here. The results can also be viewed inside the ticket itself - in the visitor's details section on the right. 

In Analytics, you can find the average rating (for a selected time period) in the Tickets tab. You will see a graph with more details, as well as the View rated tickets option - allowing you to see a list of all rated tickets, sorted by rating.

You can also find the average ticket rating for each operator in the Operators tab of the Analytics section. 

Adding tags

To add a tag to your ticket, click on Add ticket tag under the Info tab (in the upper-right, visible whenever you're viewing a ticket):

Using ticket tags can be useful if you need to quickly identify certain ticket threads or see some crucial information fast. Any added tag will be visible inside the ticket itself.

You can also use your ticket tags to create custom ticket views - which you can learn more about in this article.

but you will also be able to browse your Contacts list by tags (you can learn more about that in this article).