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Help Scout

COMMS
Velocity0.0

After adding SMS and a customer portal, Help Scout rebuilds the sidebar agents work from.

shared-inboxcustomer-portalsmsslasscheduling
◆Current state
October's update turned inward: the conversation sidebar now holds status, assignee, SLA, Topics and Sentiment beside customer and company information, with Custom Fields editable in place and a layout agents can resize and reorder. It follows two customer-facing surfaces in August, two-way SMS through a customer's own Twilio number and a Customer Portal with company-level history. Underneath, the SLA system built out in May and June drives workflows, views and reporting.
◆Where it's heading
The product is widening from an agent-side inbox into the places customers actually wait, SMS, WhatsApp and a signed-in portal, with the portal on the Plus and Pro tiers. The sidebar is the counterweight: more channels and company context only help if agents can see them in one place.
◆Prediction
Expect the portal to pick up what adjacent surfaces already have — SLA status, more self-serve actions — and the channel list to keep widening rather than any one channel getting deeper.

◆Recent moves

  1. 1mo ago

    Put Customer Context in Reach Inbox

    The conversation sidebar is rebuilt so status, assignee, SLA, Topics and Sentiment sit with customer context, and Custom Fields become editable in place. After a run of new channels, this is the agent-side work that keeps them manageable.

    View source ↗
  2. 3mo ago

    Customer Portal gives a company's contacts one view of its tickets

    ⚡ SPARK

    The first surface Help Scout hands to customers themselves, extending the account-context work of Company Profile from the agent side to the customer side. It also makes company-level visibility a paid-tier line.

    View source ↗
  3. 3mo ago

    Two-way SMS in the shared inbox via your own Twilio number

    ⚡ SPARK

    SMS joins email, chat, and social in the same inbox, on a number the customer brings rather than one Help Scout brokers. It is the second channel added in this stretch, after WhatsApp went native in February.

    View source ↗
  4. 3mo ago

    Each inbox can follow its own office-hours schedule

    Office hours move from one company-wide schedule to a schedule per inbox, so teams in different time zones report accurately and send the right out-of-office replies.

    View source ↗
  5. 4mo ago

    Conversations auto-reassign when a teammate is away

    Conversations assigned to an away teammate become unassigned after a configurable threshold when a customer replies or a workflow fires. Operational plumbing that keeps SLA timers honest.

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  6. 4mo ago

    Set availability status from web and mobile

    Active, Away, and custom statuses can be set from web and mobile and stay in sync, giving assignment decisions better context. It pairs directly with the away-reassignment work.

    View source ↗