What Growth Dept Helpdesk is
The parts of the helpdesk, the handful of things it is built from (tickets, customers, views, macros, rules) and where to start on day one.
On this page
Growth Dept Helpdesk is a shared inbox for an online store's support team. Every customer conversation, whether it started as an email, a chat on your site, a contact form or a help center question, becomes a ticket that your team can read, answer, hand to each other and close. Beside each ticket you see the customer, their earlier conversations and, once your Shopify store is connected, their orders.
The six areas#
Open the menu at the top left of any screen (it shows the name of the area you are in) to move between them.
| Area | What it holds | Who uses it most |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox | Views of tickets, the ticket list and the open ticket | Everyone, all day |
| Customers | Everyone who has written in, their profiles, tickets and orders | Agents looking someone up |
| AI Agent | Skills and actions for Haylee, the AI agent, and the drafts she writes | Lead agents and admins |
| Analytics | Live view, volume, response times, satisfaction and automation reports | Leads and admins |
| Workflows | Rules, macros, tags, ticket and customer fields, views, SLAs, auto-merge, flows and the satisfaction survey | Admins and lead agents |
| Settings | Your profile and notifications, users, teams, channels, the store, business hours, imports and the REST API | Admins; everyone for their own profile |
Three more controls sit in the navigation panel on the left: the bell for recent assignments, the magnifier for search (/ does the same), and Ask Haylee at the bottom, which opens a conversation with your helpdesk's AI agent when one is linked. The ? button next to your initials leads to these guides.
What the helpdesk is made of#
Most of what you do here involves a few kinds of object. Knowing what each one is makes the rest of the guides easier to follow.
| Object | What it is |
|---|---|
| Ticket | One conversation with one customer: its messages, internal notes, tags, fields, assignee, team, priority and status (open or closed) |
| Message | Something said on a ticket. A reply goes to the customer; an internal note stays with your team |
| Customer | A person who has written in, with their email addresses, phone numbers, a note and customer fields. Tickets from the same address land on the same customer |
| View | A saved list of tickets that match some filters, such as "open, tagged returns". The inbox's left column is a list of views |
| Tag | A short label on a ticket, such as order-status, used to group tickets in views, rules and reports |
| Ticket field | A fact your team records on every ticket, such as the contact reason. Some fields must be filled in before a ticket can close |
| Macro | A saved reply, with blanks the helpdesk fills in, that can also tag, assign or snooze the ticket when you send it |
| Rule | An automatic step: when something happens to a ticket and it matches the conditions, the rule acts on it |
| Team | A group of agents that tickets can be assigned to, such as "Orders & Shipping" |
Where conversations come from#
Email: a Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox connected directly, or any other address forwarded to the helpdesk.
Chat on your store, with an offline message form when nobody is around.
Contact forms you publish on your site or in your help center.
The REST API, for anything your own code sends in.
Phone calls and texts come in on numbers the helpdesk holds for you, once Growth Dept switches them on; see Take phone calls in the helpdesk and Answer texts (SMS). You can also open a ticket yourself, for example to write to a customer first. Social media messages are not built yet; see Not available yet for what to use instead.
Haylee, the AI agent#
Haylee works in your helpdesk through her own account, so her name appears on everything she does. She drafts replies for a person to send, adds internal notes, tags tickets and writes skills based on how your team already answers. Admins decide in AI Agent > Actions what she may do on her own. She never sends a reply unless your helpdesk has switched that on. Read Meet Haylee for the details.
The demo helpdesk#
The screenshots in these guides come from Harbor & Pine, a demo helpdesk Growth Dept runs with a made-up candle and home-goods store. Its customers and orders are fictional, and nothing typed there is sent to anyone. Your own helpdesk looks the same once your mail and store are connected.
Your first day#
Sign in from your invitation. See Sign in and fix sign-in problems.
In Settings > Your profile, check your name and time zone.
In Settings > Notifications, choose which events email you. See Notifications.
Open the Inbox and read The inbox, then Work a ticket from first read to close.
Press ? to see the keyboard shortcuts.
If you are setting the helpdesk up for your team, follow the launch checklist instead.
1. A quick tour of Growth Dept HelpdeskRelated articles
- Launch checklist for adminsThe setup steps in a sensible order, from importing history and connecting email to rules, macros and a test ticket, each linked to its guide.
- Roles and what each can doThe six helpdesk roles from Admin to Observer, the organization roles above them, and a table of what each role may change.
- The inbox: views, the ticket list and the ticket panelWhat each part of the inbox shows, what the built-in views contain, how the ticket list sorts and refreshes, and the two list layouts.
- Work a ticket from first read to closeReading the conversation and its events, the four ways to answer, Cc and attachments, sending, closing and reopening, and the spam, trash, print and link actions.
Still stuck?
Write to the Growth Dept team and a person answers. Say which helpdesk you work in and what you were trying to do.