ClearFeed External Helpdesk

Work with your customers on Slack Connect Channels or Slack Community using ClearFeed's Helpdesk

Before starting, ensure that you have integrated your Slack Workspace with ClearFeed and check that your product edition is set to "External" on Product Editions.

Once done, you can create your first collection - a group of Slack channels that have similar helpdesk settings.

Create your first Collection

1. To set up the collection Navigate to Collections from the side navigation bar.

2. Click on the Add new Collection button on the bottom-left of the page

3. Choose support team members as Responders

   • You can configure Slack users from specific domains to be responder, or you can also add Slack users as additional responders if they are not from a common domain

   • Check auto-assignment to first-responders ON

4. Add Request channels on which you plan to provide support to customers

   • All public Slack channels can be added from the web app

   • Private Slack channels can be added by typing /invite @Clearfeed on the Slack channels. They can only be added after a Collection is created

5. Add a Triage channel for the support team to work from on Slack

   • You can select Create new channel or Select existing option

6. In the Ticketing section, you can keep the option un-checked. Generally, we have observed that for external support on Slack, you'd like to keep it conversational.

7. You can edit an existing workflow to send a notification to the corresponding triage channel if there is no response to a request for 60 mins

Creating requests

• Any message from your customers on request channels creates a request on ClearFeed

• Customers won't notice the presence of any Request IDs and their statuses

• Here is how the request appears on the request channel (left) and the triage channel (right)

Managing and replying to requests

• All requests from request channels start a new thread in the triage channel

• You can modify the status, assignment, and other properties of requests from the triage channel

• Replies to a thread in the triage channel are posted on the same thread on the request channel

• Replies starting with🔒 emoji are not propagated and are internal comments for the support team

• Best to mute all request channels that you are a part of to avoid dual notifications

Managing requests from a triage channel

Triaging requests from the ClearFeed web app

Managing requests from Web App

Triaging requests from the ClearFeed Slack App

Managing requests from Slack app

Further Readings

• You can create custom fields for requests for the support team to categorize requests

• You can also convert requests into Tickets and give public IDs and status to customers. For this:

  • Ticketing Settings on the Collection Settings: Turned ON