TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction to Collaboration
- Collaborate within your team
- Collaborate across teams
- Collaborate externally
Introduction to Collaboration
Freshdesk provides a comprehensive platform that enables your teams to have seamless collaboration, leading to faster issue resolution and enhanced customer satisfaction.
This article provides details on the various collaboration features offered by Freshdesk and outlines how you can use them to maximize your team's productivity.
Benefits of collaboration
Effective collaboration is crucial for delivering excellent customer service. Often, a customer issue may require close collaboration among multiple teams, both internal and external.
By facilitating seamless communication and collaboration, Freshdesk empowers your team to provide faster and more accurate responses.
Here are some benefits of team collaboration:
- Simplify complex workflows: Easily share ticket information across teams, fast-track ticket workflows, and reduce resolution time.
- Resolve issues faster: Quickly reach out to experts in your team to find solutions for complex problems.
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Get better visibility: Share every step of a ticket lifecycle with your team, providing them with a complete context of the ticket details.
Different ways you can collaborate in Freshdesk
- Collaborate within your team: When you want to connect with other agents from the support team in Freshdesk. For example, support team colleagues, supervisors, L2 support teams, etc.
- Collaborate across teams: When you want to connect with members from other teams but within your organization. This includes IT teams, engineering teams, senior management, etc.
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Collaborate outside your organization: When you want to communicate with teams outside your organization. For example, SI (System Integration) partners, outsourcing partners, courier services, etc.
Plan availability
| Collaboration in Freshdesk | Features | Availability |
|---|---|---|
|
Collaborate within your team |
Private threads | Free+ |
| Discussion threads | Free+ | |
| Parent/child ticketing | Pro+ | |
| Shared ownership | Pro+ | |
| Collaborate across teams | Freshservice threads | Free+ |
| Slack Integration | Growth+ | |
| Microsoft Teams integration | Growth+ | |
| Collaborate outside your organization | Forward threads | Free+ |
Understanding the collaborator role
Freshdesk agents, supervisors, and admins have the ability to share and collaborate within or across teams. Furthermore, Freshdesk provides the Collaborator role, which allows external users to access and collaborate in Freshdesk.
Collaborators can be any stakeholders who assist full-time agents by sharing ticket-related information, updates, opinions, or approvals necessary for resolving customer issues.
Note that collaborators do not have support agent privileges and cannot perform any actions that are visible to customers. For more information about Collaborators, refer to Collaborators.
Collaborate within your team
The following capabilities in Freshdesk help you work closely with your team, collaborate on tickets, and resolve issues faster without switching tabs or applications.
Let's look at the features you can use to collaborate within your team:
Private threads
Private threads allow you to initiate a conversation with team members without cluttering the primary ticket. You can start a private thread on a private or public note or on a customer response.
When to use a private thread?
Use private threads when you need to discuss with another team member about a specific note or customer response without expecting any significant workflow action or immediate response from them.
Let's see a use case to understand the benefits of using private threads
Consider you are working on a reassigned ticket that was previously handled by another agent, and you have a query regarding a note added by the previous agent. In such a scenario, you can easily start a private thread on the note and tag the agent to clarify your questions. This saves time and provides better context to other agents, enabling a more efficient resolution process.
How to use a private thread?
You can start a private thread on a private/public note or customer responses within a ticket. For instructions, check Using private threads.
Note: You can also start a private thread with an external team member outside Freshdesk by adding them as a collaborator.
Discussion threads
Discussion threads allow you to add another agent or collaborator and initiate a discussion. When you start a discussion thread, the tagged agent or collaborator gains visibility to the entire ticket, providing them with the necessary context to effectively contribute to its resolution.
When to use discussion threads?
You can use discussion threads when you want to provide complete understanding of the ticket's details to another team member and give all the relevant information required to work on the issue.
Let's consider a use case to illustrate the benefits of using Discussion Threads:
Imagine a customer requests a subscription cancellation and also wants a refund. As the support agent, you are uncertain about the eligibility criteria for the refund and need to clarify this with your manager.
In this situation, you can quickly initiate a discussion thread with your manager. This helps you to have a detailed discussion within the ticket and resolve the issue faster while keeping the ticket organized and uncluttered.
How to use a discussion thread?
You can start a discussion thread on an entire ticket. For instructions, check Using discussion threads.
Note: You can also start a discussion thread with an external team member outside Freshdesk by adding them as a collaborator.
Parent/child ticketing
This feature allows you to divide complex issues into smaller modules and distribute them among your team members. With this feature, you can ensure that each team or agent is assigned specific tasks and is accountable for their respective responsibilities, leading to improved collaboration and faster resolution.
When to use child tickets?
You can use child tickets for resolving complex problems that require multiple steps or involve various teams or agents. By breaking down the work into smaller modules, you can assign each child ticket to a particular group or agent and collaborate with all the stakeholders simultaneously. This approach maximizes team productivity and ensures a quicker resolution to the overall issue.
Here’s a use case to better understand the benefits of child tickets:
Imagine you work at a travel desk, and a customer requests assistance with booking their flight tickets. As the support agent, your goal is to provide a seamless ticket-booking experience for the customer.
In this scenario, you can divide the primary ticket into separate child tickets, such as "Check travel dates," "Confirm meal preference," "Verify passport and VISA," and "Raise invoice”, and assign them to respective teams or agents responsible.
For instance, the team or agent assigned to the "Check travel dates" child ticket will focus on ensuring the availability of flights on the customer's preferred date with the airline. Simultaneously, other teams or agents will handle their assigned child tickets. Once all the child tickets are successfully resolved, the primary ticket can be closed.
By utilizing the child tickets feature, you empower your team to efficiently split complex issues, delegate tasks, and collaborate seamlessly. This enhances teamwork, improves productivity, ensuring high-quality customer service.
How to split a ticket?
Check out this article to learn how to divide a ticket into child tickets.
Shared ownership
Shared ownership enables seamless ticket sharing among teams without compromising visibility. With this feature, primary agents can stay informed about ticket updates even when other agents are handling the issue. By sharing ticket ownership, teams can communicate better and stay focussed on resolving issues faster.
When to use shared ownership?
You can utilize the shared ownership feature to create efficient workflows and enhance communication between teams. This ensures that the primary agent handling the issue always has up-to-date information on ticket status even when the ticket moves across teams.
Here's a real-time scenario that explains this feature better.
Consider an e-commerce company that offers a wide range of products to its customers. They have multiple internal teams to handle orders, refunds/replacements, and inventory.
A customer raises a replacement request for a recently purchased defective product. Typically, the primary agent handling the issue reassigns the ticket to the replacement team, losing any further access to the ticket. However, with shared ownership, the primary agent can share the ticket with the concerned team and still retain visibility to the entire workflow. This allows both agents involved to stay informed and simplifies the overall process.
How to enable shared ownership?
For more details on shared ownership, check out this article.
Collaborate across teams
Sometimes, as a support agent, you may need to communicate with teams across your organization, such as the IT team, Engineering, or Management teams, to resolve an issue.
You can use Freshdesk's collaboration features to connect seamlessly with cross-functional teams. This not only gives them a complete context on the issue but also reduces your time in going back and forth. The following features and integrations in Freshdesk help you seamlessly collaborate with anyone and share information:
Freshdesk offers a wide range of features for cross-team collaboration:
Freshservice threads
Collaborate and share information with teams working out of Freshservice directly on Freshdesk. With Freshdesk-Freshservice integration, you can unify your customer support and internal teams to provide faster customer service.
When to use Freshservice threads?
Use Freshservice threads to quickly connect with internal teams who use Freshservice. Easily create Freshservice requests or incidents from within Freshdesk and get real-time ticket updates. With Freshservice threads, access everything you need from one screen and easily reduce resolution time.
Let’s explore an usecase to understand the benefits of using Freshservice threads.
Imagine a customer who is a gamer experiencing a non-responsive video controller during a live stream. The customer contacts the video controller's manufacturer center to get an immediate replacement. Here's how a support agent can quickly resolve this issue using Freshservice Threads:
- The support agent first checks the warranty period to determine if the customer is eligible for a replacement.
- The agent initiates a Freshservice thread to check with the inventory team about the estimated replacement date.
- A Freshservice agent receives the request and confirms that the controller is available for replacement, which can be done within a day.
- The Freshservice agent initiates the replacement process and then notifies the support agent.
- With all the necessary information at hand, the support agent promptly responds to the customer regarding the replacement, ensuring a timely resolution.
How to create a Freshservice ticket?
Check out this article to learn more about Freshservice threads.
Using third-party integrations for cross-team collaboration
In addition to the native Freshdesk features, you can also integrate powerful collaborative third-party apps to connect with your teams to manage support tasks effectively:
Slack integration
Freshdesk supports two-way integration with Slack that enables you to have seamless cross-team collaboration. By using the extensive team collaboration capabilities of Slack and the superior ticketing features of Freshdesk, your team can stay connected and work together effortlessly.
You can use Slack to:
- Create tickets directly from Slack and easily convert Slack messages to tickets.
- Notify teams on private/public channels or send direct messages about ticket creation and updates
- Use Freshdesk automation rules to automatically share ticket updates to anyone on a private/public channel
Learn more about Freshdesk integration on Slack here.
Microsoft Teams integration
The Freshdesk-Microsoft Teams integration enables seamless communication and simplifies support workflows by helping teams quickly connect and share tasks directly on Microsoft Teams without the need to switch tabs.
You can use Microsoft Teams to:
- Create, view, and update tickets directly on MS teams
- Get instant alerts from Freshdesk on Microsoft Teams for ticket assignments and ticket updates
Automate ticket workflows based on specific conditions and instantly notify channels in Microsoft Teams whenever a ticket is created/updated
Learn more about Microsoft Teams here.
Let's see how different internal teams in a company can use Freshdesk and third-party apps to discuss and improve workflows.
A support agent receives a customer query regarding a specific feature of the company's product. Since the request is about a new feature, the support agent wants to involve the product team to provide accurate information to the customer. The support agent can reach to the product team directly on a Slack channel or via a direct message.
The product team recognizes the customer’s query as a new feature request, updates the ticket with all the required information, and also creates a new ticket for the feature request. The support agent receives instant updates on the ticket and shares the information with the customer. Additionally, the support and product teams can utilize automation rules in Freshdesk to configure the rules to automatically notify relevant stakeholders in Slack/Microsoft Teams on significant ticket updates.
Collaborate externally
Support agents may often need to communicate with external partners, vendors, or experts outside your organization. With Freshdesk's robust collaboration features, you can establish centralized communication with external stakeholders and efficiently manage your support tasks.
For example, consider a healthcare company that frequently collaborates with external parties, such as medical device manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies, to deliver better patient care.
Forward threads
Forward threads enable you to easily forward a ticket to anyone outside your organization. With this, the external members gain context to all the previous conversations in the ticket, even if they don’t use Freshdesk. All subsequent responses and interactions on a forward thread are captured separately without cluttering the main ticket.
When to use forward threads?
You can utilize forward threads to collaborate with external members on a specific ticket. This allows you to involve external stakeholders in the conversation and receive their input as needed.
Let's explore a usecase to illustrate the benefits of forward threads:
Imagine a healthcare organization that offers comprehensive haircare solutions. To provide holistic care, they partner with an external nutritionist to assist patients with their dietary requirements. Additionally, the organization outsources its haircare products from third-party vendors.
When a patient requests an appointment with the healthcare provider, the support agent can use the forward threads to send the appointment request to the external nutritionist to check their availability. Similarly, the agent can also forward the request to the third-party vendor to order haircare products specific to the patient's needs.
With forward threads, the support agent can seamlessly collaborate with external stakeholders, ensuring they have all the necessary information to assist with resolving the ticket, resulting in improved patient care and overall customer satisfaction.
How to use forward threads?
Check out this article to learn more about forward threads.