Though support conversations are mostly initiated by the customer, in some cases your support agents may want to reach out to customers themselves. For example, it can be a customer success effort where agents just want to check how users are doing, or to inform them about maintenance or delays. With Freshdesk, you can send outbound emails from your helpdesk, convert them into tickets and track their progress.
To send an outbound email, go to 'New' dropdown on the right corner of the helpdesk > New Email (from the icon next to the agent profile picture):
Note: The New Email option is only available under New dropdown when the Allow agents to initiate conversation with customers? is toggled ON under Admin > Email
This will open up a compose email page where you can send out emails to any new customers or to your existing contacts. Here is a list of all the fields that you will need to fill out while you do this.
- From address - You can choose to send from any mailbox configured in Admin > Email
- To address - The recipient of the email can be an existing customer or a new one. New customer email addresses will be added as contacts automatically. (Please note that you cannot send an email to more than one recipient currently. If you enter multiple email addresses in the 'To' field, only the first email address will receive the email.)
- CC - You can CC any number of existing/new contacts.
- Subject - The email will not be sent out without a subject. This will be the subject of the ticket created through this email.
- Email body - You can format the content of the email and add images if necessary. The agent signature can also be modified in the email body.
- Properties - Once you hit send, Freshdesk will send the email and also convert this conversation into a ticket. So the compose page will have the ticket properties too.
Click Send after you are done with composing the email. To create another email, select the checkbox Send another.
Note: If you have configured Multiple products (available from the Estate plan) in your helpdesk, the 'Product' field will not be visible on the Outbound Email page. The 'From' address associated with the specific product would automatically take the corresponding 'Product' name once the ticket is created.
By default, the ticket will be marked as Closed and assigned to the agent sending the email. This makes sure that SLA timers aren't running unnecessarily on an outbound ticket. Once you send the email, you will be taken to the corresponding ticket.
Note: You may not be able to see the new ticket in the ticket list page because your default views don't generally include Closed tickets.
Once the customer responds to the email, the reply is appended to the ticket and the Status is changed to Open. The SLA timers start running at this point and you will be able to see the 'Due by time' of the ticket right.
