Tidio Helpdesk offers a convenient solution for efficient customer support management. By transferring time-consuming calls to tickets, you can effectively manage your team’s work. This article will guide you through setting up and using Tidio Helpdesk, helping you streamline your customer support workflow.
Helpdesk Benefits
Manage your time
Transfer time-consuming conversations to tickets to save you the effort of handling complaints, questions, and requests via chat. Change ticket statuses and keep your inbox clean.
Create omnichannel support
Offer your customers more ways to communicate with you. Omnichannel support connects experiences across channels, making the customer experience completely seamless.
Prioritize your cards
Assign priority to tickets according to SLA policies.
Collaborate with your colleagues
Assign tickets to the team members 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 who are responsible for resolving them in the shortest time possible.
Add notes to improve communication
Help your colleagues by sending comments regarding the case.
Connect your mailbox
To start using the ticket system, you will need to connect your mailbox first. You can connect your mailbox by going to Settings> Helpdesk in the Tidio admin panel.
You can read more about how to add your external mailbox in our article on forwarding emails to Tidio.
Once you’re logged in, click the Connect Mailbox button to start the process:
You will see a pop-up window with more options. Here you can select an existing email address that you would like to connect:
Next, you’ll receive detailed instructions for setting up the connection. You can choose from several common providers (e.g. Gmail) and see all the steps required, or use the Other mailbox provider option – and get your forwarding address to Tidio right away:
An alternative option you have when you connect is to create a new email address – with the domain @tidio.xyz . This can be useful if you just need an address quickly, and it’s an address you can share with your clients or use to forward to other mailboxes if you wish.
Once added, each mailbox will appear in the Mailbox Connection section, along with its verification status (and instructions, if any):
If you have already connected your mailbox, skip this step. All 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 mailbox panel.
When multiple mailboxes are combined, you’ll find the original mailbox that received the email listed below each card:
Adding a signature to cards
Each operator can add their signature in Settings.> Helpdesk as well. See the Custom Email Signature section there; you can enable and modify the signature. You can add text and one image, use basic text formatting as well as hyperlinks.
Please note: It is currently not possible to add custom code or change the overall format of the signature. The text can only be changed in the suggested ways, and the image can only appear at the bottom.
Send emails from your address (or domain)
To improve your credibility, you can start sending emails to your customers from your email address.
Using your existing email address
To do this, go to Settings> Helpdesk> Sender address . Click the Add Sender Address button on the right:
You will see a pop-up window asking for more information; here you can select your domain (if you have already connected one – more on that later!), or your existing email address. This address can (but does not have to be) an address you have already connected with your Helpdesk before:
Type in the address you want to use and complete the verification process by providing the code sent to your mailbox:
Once you’re done, you can continue adding more addresses to the list and choose the default address. They will be available to select as your default sender address (alongside any custom domain addresses you’ve added):
You have the option to select the sender address for each card from a drop-down list:
Using your domain
You can also use the recommended option: Custom Domain . This allows you to configure your DNS records and increase the delivery of your tickets! For each domain you add and successfully verify, you can also add custom aliases. To enable this, you must first connect your domain.
Go to Settings> Domains :
…and use the Connect your domain button there:
In the pop-up window, provide the domain you would like to use:
Next, you’ll see your unique DNS records – use them in your domain provider’s DNS settings as instructed, and you’re all set!
Once the domain is verified, it will be available for you to select when you add a new sender address in Settings.> Helpdesk . In the pop-up window, you can also create an alias to use with this domain:
For more details and troubleshooting, please see our article on connecting your domains here.
Automatic response
If you want to automatically reply to every incoming email (ticket), you can set up automatic responses. To do this, go to Settings> Helpdesk> Automatic response section.
You can enable an automatic response by turning on the switch and setting the message below it. Once it’s ready, don’t forget to save it!
Allow visitors to create a ticket when you are offline
When you are offline in your Tidio dashboard, you can give your visitors the option to create a ticket. This feature allows you to show your visitors a short message that can explain that you are currently offline and encourage them to create a ticket for you via a form built into the Tidio widget.
You will see all the cards later in the Conversations section of your Tidio panel.
Blocked emails
Ticket management
In this section, we describe the following aspects of Helpdesk ticket management:
Card cases
All tickets transferred to your Tidio mailbox will be displayed in an unassigned folder with a status of Open .
Next to each card, you’ll see the following information:
Click on the selected card to open it. In the card’s top toolbar, you can see (and change) the current assignee , status , and priority . You’ll also see a few more options there: Mark the card as spam ; Merge cards from the same sender (if any such cards are available); Block the sender’s email address entirely; and the option to delete the current card.
When you’re viewing a card, you can reply to it directly, leave an internal note , or forward the card to another address. You’ll see these different options in the bottom half of the card, where the typing window is (and note that you can also use the Cc and Bcc options on the right, if you need to add more recipients):
Direct email responses
Using the Email option, you can write a standard response that will be sent to the recipient(s):
Internal notes
By selecting the Internal Note option, you can leave a note that only other operators viewing the card will see:
Transfer tickets
Cc and Bcc
Create a card from scratch
To create your first card, click the Create Card button in the left menu of the mailbox panel.
In the card creation view, you can specify the following:
Card subject
Summarize the content of the card in the form of a short sentence.
To (recipient 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 visible or hidden recipients).
From (your sender address)
The email address you are using to send this message (you can use the default Tidio domain, or one of your own, if already added).
priority
You can set the priority to low , normal , or urgent .
assigned
The operator responsible for handling the card.
Card message (text input)
The body of the email; this is where your message is written. Note that you can add basic text formatting , hyperlinks , as well as canned responses (
(and attachments )
).
Internal note mode
Enabling this mode in the bottom left allows you to write private messages that customers will not see. Internal comments are only visible to operators viewing the given card.
Statuses
To send the email – click the blue Send drop-down menu to select the correct status for the email. You can send the email as:
open
The default status for all newly created tickets. If an operator is assigned, the assignee will see the email in their My Open folder. If no operator is assigned, the ticket will appear in the All Open and Unassigned folders.
waiting
Pending status means you are waiting for a response from the customer. When the customer writes back – the status automatically changes to Open .
Solved
This status means that the ticket is closed, and you are not waiting for further responses from the customer. The ticket will appear in an open case if the customer writes back.
Create tickets from conversations
You can also create a new ticket from the chat panel. To create a ticket during your chat conversation – click the Create Ticket option in the top right corner of the conversation:
You will see a window that allows you to create a new ticket. The system will automatically fill in the visitor’s email address. Of course, you can add more recipients using the Cc/Bcc option, if you wish:
Sorting and filtering cards
In each card portfolio you can sort all the cards within it from newest (top) to oldest, or from oldest to newest. You will see the option at the top of each portfolio:
This can be very useful when you have a larger number of tickets to handle, and you want to organize your work according to the date of the tickets.
In addition to the sorting option, My Open Portfolio also offers another feature: filtering the visible cards by status . You can see the option in the upper right corner of the portfolio:
This allows you to see all tickets, only open tickets, or only pending tickets within the case. Naturally, filtering is not available in the unassigned case (since all tickets there are always open), nor in the resolved case (all tickets there are always resolved).
Custom card views
Using custom views is a great way to organize your communications, and you can use this for tickets. Creating your own views will allow you to quickly access specific types of tickets, and you can base the views on different conditions and filters.
Please see this comprehensive guide on creating custom card views for more details.
Service Level Agreement (SLA) Policy
Adding a Service Level Agreement (SLA) policy allows you to set time frames for your agents’ response times to tickets. This allows you to set a standard and be more efficient with your services, as agents will be more aware of their response times. In turn, this 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 (same email address), you have the option to merge them all into just one ticket. You can do this either directly from the Unassigned folder or from the My Open folder.
First, you need to find the cards you want to merge and select them. Check the box that appears next to a card when you hover your mouse over it, then continue selecting the other cards (from the same user):
Once you have selected all the correct cards, click the Merge button at the top:
You will see a new window, with all the selected cards listed. At this point, you need to choose which card will become the main card from now on; all the content from the other cards will be moved to the new card, in chronological order, and only one card will remain . Click the Merge Cards button when you are ready:
Once the cards have been merged, you will see the resulting card in your deck – and all the contents of the other cards within it:
Another feature that can help you merge cards efficiently is the Merge Into button at the top right of a card. It will become active when you are viewing a card and Tidio detects that other cards (from the same email address) exist in your card box. You can use the button to merge the current card with another card of your choice. You can avoid manual searching!
Once you click the Merge Into button, you’ll see the same pop-up window as we described above – listing all the cards available to merge with the current card.
Customer satisfaction rating and feedback
When a ticket is closed (resolved), you can send an automated satisfaction survey via email. This is enabled by default, and can be managed through settings.> Customer Satisfaction . You can learn about the customer satisfaction tool in more detail here.
Enabling and changing the survey email
The customer satisfaction tool allows you to request a rating on a scale consisting of 5 options (emojis). You can set the amount of time after which the survey will be sent. Of course, you can change all the default texts for the survey email as well.
Here’s an example of what such a satisfaction survey email could look like from the customer’s side:
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 checked within the card itself – in the Visitor Details section on the right.
In Analytics, you can find the average rating (for a selected time period) on the Cards tab. You’ll see a graph with more details, as well as the View Rated Cards option – which lets you see a list of all rated cards, sorted by rating.
You can also find the average rating for each operator in the Operators card of the Analytics section.
