What is Helpwise?
Helpwise (by SaaS Labs) is a one-stop solution to manage all customer queries across multiple
channels in one place. With Helpwise, customers can configure ‘team inboxes’ for a variety of
text-based channels - emails, SMS, Whatsapp, chatbots, Instagram, etc. in a singular view.
The Helpwise Home Page is where every user lands post login. In this view, they are able to get
a birds eye view of which inboxes are set up, as well as navigate through the nav bar to a few
other destinations.
Problem-at-hand
The first action a user generally takes everyday on Helpwise is to go into each inbox
and go through every conversation to identify which ones need attention. As the number of
inboxes scale, this can often be cumbersome, time consuming, and result in missed action items. We want to improve the usability of Helpwise by providing them an overview and ability to
focus on urgent and important actions.
Goals
A user when logs in should be able to
- Identify messages which might need urgent attention (assigned to anyone) such as, “Unreplied to conversations”, Open conversations for more than x days, conversations which have breached SLA etc.
- Identify conversations assigned to me that need my attention, across all inboxes
- Identifying any new messages across inboxes that I need to assign to a team member
- Understand key metrics such as average response time, resolution time at a glance
Research
What is a shared inbox and why was it born?
Simply put, a shared inbox is an inbox that allows multiple people to receive, read, manage, and reply to emails inside the same email account. It solves the email overload problem by as it is more productive, faster or better at working in teams.
We have been using shared inboxes but in a different way...
- Sharing one email account by giving the password to all the team members
- One manager in charge of the workload who directs the right email to the right person
- Basic software solutions like Outlook
- DIY approaches like the following
The problem with public email accounts is that they are a mess. You do not necessarily know who is responsible for the emails that land in them. If you want to discuss an email, you are drowned in folders and extra apps and unnecessary meetings. That’s when shared inbox was born where everything can be managed properly.
Shared inbox allows multiple people to access the same email account. A shared inbox gives
- Clear overview of the tasks
- Clear ownership
- All in one place solution
- Fast problem-solving
Market research
I looked at some Alerting and Monitoring tools because these tools solve the problem of critical alerts being missed out.
Insights from market research
- Enable teams to analyze only relevant alerts, thus eliminating alert fatigue
- Provide options to respond faster
- Help teams increase their performance
Solution
Designing the information architecture
- All conversations should be treated as tickets
- All critical tickets should have a sense of urgency
- There should be clear prioritisation of tickets
- Quick actions should be easy to take
- Stakeholder of the ticket should be mentioned upfront
- There should be clear filtering and sorting options
- Easy navigation
- Moved the top navigation to a side menu for easy and quick access and to reduce the clutter from top
- Grouped all the related actions together for more clarity
- Latest first
- Earliest first
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4 |
Dashboard | Manage | Interact | Create help center |
Inboxes | Automation | Forms | Reports |
File Manager | ㅤ | ㅤ | ㅤ |
Priority Scale
Default sorting
By default, the conversations will be arranged from Highest to Very low priority.
This is done so that when the user lands on this page, (s)he is able to see the all conversations that need immediate attention.
The user can also sort the list according to Date received
Filter
Since the view shows all the conversations across all inboxes, there is an option for the user to filter the conversations according to inbox.
To solve for scalability, the filter menu also has a search option to filter the long list of inboxes with ease.
📌 Assumptions
Assumption 1: The inboxes are already added
Assumption 2: I have not designed for a new user
Assumption 3: The data shown in the design is dummy data and some of it has been taken from the demo video for which the link was given in the problem statement brief
Types of conversations
1. All
Shows all the conversations arranged from highest → lowest priority (by default) with options to filter by inbox
2. Open
Open conversations can be of 3 types:
Assumption 4: For brevity, the different kinds of SLA’s are not present
Assumption 5: SLA breached automatically gets assigned the highest priority
SLA targets can be different depending on the priority of the task/conversation. For eg.
b. Overdue
Conversations which are open for more than x hours
Assumption 6: Maximum value of X has been assumed to be 48 hours as this is generally the resolution timeline for most products.
3. Closed
Conversations that have been closed till date or as per the time selected.
4. Unassigned
Conversations received across all inboxes that have not been assigned to anyone.
5. Unacknowledged
Conversations across all inboxes that have been read but not assigned to anyone.
Assumption 7: The user who acknowledges an unacknowledged conversation, it automatically gets assigned to that user
6. Assigned to me
All the conversations assigned to the logged in user across all inboxes sorted acc. to priority (highest → low)
7. Not seen
All the unread conversations across all inboxes.
Assumption 8: For brevity, it has been assumed that the conversations can have one status at a time. For eg. A conversation that is Unacknowledged can also be Overdue or SLA breached
Final UI
There are 2 views for the user to get an overview of the conversations.
The user can easily switch between the List and Dashboard view using the icon buttons on top.
1. List view (Default)
When the user logs in, the list view is default as the user will be able to easily take actions on the urgent conversations.
The quick actions available are customised as per the type of conversation for easy access.
2. Dashboard view
Dashboard gives the user an overview of the following for the Last 30 days:
- Total number of conversations in each category and trend compared to the previous week
- Average response vs Resolution time
- Comparison of the number of conversations arranged according to priority
Link to prototype
Next steps
- Each conversation can be clicked to view more details in a side sheet that slides in from the right hand side of the screen.
- Tags can be added to group conversations under certain category.
- Each conversation can be categorised under different system status to gain more context.
