Help Scout

✨ Want a fun (and super low-lift) way to build remote culture and boost engagement? Try a Zoom "lunch and learn" led by one of your own teammates. We just wrapped an incredible session on the art of negotiation with our legendary COO, Shawna Fisher — it was funny, insightful, and packed with practical takeaways. Huge shoutout to our Help Scout women's ERG (#whoruntheworld 💪) for hosting! Events like this do more than fill a calendar! They spark connection, celebrate internal expertise, and give folks a chance to learn from each other in a casual, human way. And in a remote culture, that kind of shared moment goes a long way. I know you have a few brilliant coworkers who’d love to share something they’re passionate about. All you have to do is ask! Now my only regret is not consulting Shawna before I leased a new car last week 😆

The toolbar is BACK! Take a look 👇

Help Scout goes on tour 🚎! Showing appreciation for our customers, building trust in the support community, and getting product feedback — it's a magical combo. Check out this awesome recap from Chief Revenue Officer Andrea Kayal on our latest Leadership Table dinner event in Brooklyn. If any of our CEO and CX friends in DC or Miami want to get in on the magic, register now! ✨ DC ➡️ https://lnkd.in/e4-wPXAS Miami ➡️ https://lnkd.in/e7SCfmGs

Happy 14th birthday to us! 🎂 Our fearless founders Nick, Denny, and Jared have now officially been together longer than the Beatles. Kristi from the support team interviewed them to see how they each remembered Help Scout’s origin story all these years later. Check it out 📺

We sent Mathew Patterson over to our friends at Buzzsprout to talk like a professional about knowledge bases, and he just asked them if they could sing?

One of the most impactful practices I’ve come across recently is something Stripe’s Katie Dill calls “walking the store.” In the comments, I've provided a link to her 2023 appearance on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast, in which they covered this practice in detail. Think of walking the store as a performance review for your product. At a scheduled interval, a team dedicates time to experience the product like a customer and record their findings. Here are the specific steps: 1. Identify the critical user journeys in your product. For example, account setup, billing/conversion, and inviting new teammates are all common user journeys. 2. Make sure a team is responsible for maintaining the quality of each critical user journey. 3. Create a process for each team to walk the store, keeping a “friction log” of anything that feels confusing, cumbersome, or inconsistent along the way. Since quality can be subjective, each team should score key aspects of the experience and create reports to document insights. 4. Calibrate across teams: To ensure consistency in scoring and measurement, teams calibrate their findings across all user journeys. Ideally, this process should occur before planning the next big cycle of work so that any improvements can be implemented quickly. This practice may seem tedious at first, but I'm always blown away by what I find. A couple of weeks ago, I went through the account setup process for the first time in a while and found twenty-two things we could improve. Another member of our customer support team (Disha Mungra 👏) recently evaluated our billing experience and provided tons of insightful feedback for the team. As products grow and become more sophisticated, it’s easy to lose sight of these critical journeys in favor of shiny new features. But ultimately, trust is built (or lost) in the details of those everyday user journeys. Have you tried something similar? I’d love to hear how you approach product quality in your company.

In this episode of Mark Josephson's podcast, Nick shares the thought process and deliberate work it took to (very intentionally) usher Help Scout into a new era. This one's worth a listen. 🎧

Your knowledge base is vital for customers, but also for your support team, and now for your AI tools too. Mathew Patterson talks all things knowledge base with Buzzsprout's Priscilla Brooke on Happy to Help. -> https://lnkd.in/g3EskgV9

Hear what Pilar has to say about people-first approach to security! 🔒❤️

Knowledge bases are one of the most popular customer service channels for a reason — they help get customers with basic questions back on track more quickly. If you don’t have one already, here are six reasons why you should consider creating a knowledge base for your customers: 🔍 Many people prefer self-service In fact, even for high-urgency queries, self-service support is the second most popular channel behind phone support. 📉 A knowledge base reduces support volume Help centers keep FAQs out of the support queue, freeing up time for your team to perform more impactful work. 🍎 Knowledge bases support different learning styles The ability to provide information as text, images, video, or audio gives customers the best chance of receiving the information in a way they can absorb it. 🕰️ A knowledge base operates 24/7 If your customers keep irregular hours or live in a different time zone, a knowledge base is available whenever they need support. 💡 A knowledge base can generate useful insights You can use the reporting from your knowledge base software to improve your documentation and also your product or service itself. 🛍️A knowledge base can help you acquire new customers Help articles show up in search results and help boost SEO. So, in addition to helping existing customers, it can help you acquire new ones, too. If you’re convinced, we've linked to a resource in the comments that will give you tons of pointers for starting a customer knowledge base of your own. For those of you who are already experts, we'd love to hear your tips too! 👇