One of the challenges customer support and customer success teams face is managing a high volume of emails, consisting of a mixed bag of inquiries and customer problems. One effective solution to delivering brilliant customer service and maintaining a streamlined, non-cluttered workflow for your support teams is utilizing helpdesk software.
Typically, support@, hello@, sales@, and info@ email accounts are handled by multiple people. Without helpdesk software, you may get the issue of missed emails, multiple people responding to the same email, and, consequently, a frustrated customer support team. That’s where helpdesk software solutions come in.
Hiver is a helpdesk software solution that integrates with the email handling platform we’re all familiar with — Gmail. Once installed, the Hiver plugin provides some added functionality to the employees’ business Gmail accounts.
Hiver features
Hiver comes with several powerful features that make it easier for teams to collaborate on one email account. Fewer emails slip through the cracks, and no two people work on the same ticket at once. Plus, you’ll get an insightful dashboard to see how your support team performs. Here’s a complete rundown of Hiver‘s powerful features.
Email Delegation
Hiver manages your centralized email effectively by allowing you to delegate incoming support tickets to various team members.
That way, no message is missed, and you ensure that everyone in your team experiences an even division of labor.
Shared Inbox Management
When Hiver is integrated into Gmail, your company’s Gmail account will have a section that shows you all unassigned emails.
This feature makes it much easier to identify and resolve any unassigned tickets. It’s also vital in ensuring no emails slip through the cracks.
Additionally, your team can tag a ticket as Open, Pending, or Closed. Your sales team can tag an email as closed once a ticket is resolved. This tagging lets your team know which emails are yet to be responded to and which ones are already resolved.
Collision Alerts
In line with email delegation, Hiver also has an anti-email duplication measure.
Similar to how messaging apps let you know if the other person is typing, Hiver shows you if another team member is already responding to the email. This collision alert is simple yet effective.
By preventing multiple users from working on a single ticket, you improve email productivity for your staff. You also get to free up your staff for more emails and enhance the support experience for the customer.
Email Templates
You can create email templates with dynamic fields that your team may use for repetitive emails, such as acknowledgment emails. This feature saves your team much time from writing emails from scratch.
It also provides for a quicker response to customer queries and concerns.
Notes
Notes let you provide insight into any email communications and tickets that other members can see. They provide more ticket context and mediate short discussions between team members.
Also, instead of having to CC a team member to get their attention on a particular email, you can simply tag them on the notes you leave on various customer emails.
Notes may also be pinned to highlight important details, e.g., the customer is very frustrated.
Reporting
Hiver lets you track key customer service metrics or customer service KPIs to evaluate your team’s performance.
Such metrics include average first response time, average first assign time, average resolution time, and how many active conversations your team is handling. This can be instrumental in tracking your support team’s efficiency and boosting customer delight.
Automated Workflows
Hiver automates repetitive tasks so that your team can focus on delivering empathetic customer service.
You can set up certain rules, such as looking for specific text in the body of an email and automatically assigning it to a particular representative. For example, if the body contains the word “affiliate program,” it may automatically be assigned to marketing.
The exact process happens for tagging emails. For example, an email may be tagged as “Urgent” if it has the words “can’t,” “withdraw,” and “funds.”
SLA Monitoring
Hiver lets you set service-level agreement rules, so your team knows how to prioritize certain emails. Admins are immediately notified when service level agreement (SLA) rules are violated.
This feature is excellent for maintaining accountability within your team. It also improves internal processes for an optimized customer experience.
Measure Customer Feedback
Hiver gives you the option to send feedback surveys to your customers.
This function is necessary for gathering and measuring customer happiness. Hiver then takes this information and shows it in a report that you can present to your team or stakeholders.
Live Chat
In addition to the Gmail integration, Hiver allows your service and support agents to attend to customer queries through your website. You can provide real-time support with spontaneous and snappy responses via live chat.
Though customers would be sending these queries through your website, your agents don’t have to leave the Gmail platform to respond.
This feature makes communication with leads coming through the website quick and snappy, allowing you to deliver a positive brand experience.
AI Assistant
“Harvey” is the name of Hiver’s AI assistant.
Harvey analyzes incoming emails with natural language processing (NLP) and offers your representatives suggested responses. An example is detecting a “Thank You” in an email body coming from a customer. Harvey automatically closes this so that the conversation doesn’t get opened again.
This integration is better than having representatives manually close conversations, affecting the average ticket resolution time.
Mobile Integration
Hiver also has a mobile app that your agents can use. Everything that can be done on the browser version of Hiver can also be done on the mobile app.
Whether they’re in the taxi on the way to have a business lunch with a potential client or have just tidied up their laptop at a cafe, your employees will be able to respond to emails on the go.
Hiver pricing
Hiver’s services currently feature three different plans — Lite, Pro, and Elite.
Lite
The Lite plan costs $15 per user per month when billed annually or $19 per user when billed monthly.
The Lite plan can accommodate up to 10 users. The plan provides unlimited shared inboxes, unlimited creation of tags, and unlimited email templates. You also get email notes, collision alerts, mobile phone integration, and 24/7 chat and email Hiver support for your team.
Pro
The Pro plan costs $39 per user per month when billed annually or $49 per user when billed monthly.
The Pro plan can accommodate unlimited users. In addition to the Lite plan’s features, the Pro plan also has unlimited automation, the ability to send customer satisfaction forms, analytics showing your team’s performance, and SLA monitoring. It also lets you track removed conversations and gives you access to a dedicated Hiver success manager for your team.
Elite
The Elite plan costs $59 per user per month when billed annually and $69 per user when billed monthly.
In addition to all the Pro plan features, the Elite plan allows you to automate the assignment of emails and gets you a higher priority for Hiver success managers. It also comes with custom reports and more customized control.
Hiver will provide a custom quote for more than 50 seats, meaning companies with a large workforce can negotiate a better deal.
Hiver also offers a one-week free trial, and no credit card is required.
Hiver pros and cons
Choosing any software will have its pros and cons. Here are the pros and cons of Hiver when it comes to helpdesks.
Pros
One of the most significant upsides to Hiver is that it’s easy to use since it integrates directly with Gmail. Here are the additional benefits:
- It has a streamlined user experience that doesn’t make it feel any different from sending emails—a task most corporate employees know full well.
- Its internal notes feature is something all Helpdesks have. However, Hiver’s placement of the notes minimizes accidentally sending internal messages to the customer recipient.
- Starting at $15 per user, it’s cheaper than its competitors. For example, Zendesk starts at $49 per user, whereas HappyFox starts at $29 per user.
Hiver’s features are commonplace in Helpdesk software, but Hiver’s non-clunky interface makes it stand out.
Cons
Hiver’s simplicity is also its weakness. Here are the tool’s drawbacks:
- The tool lacks a CRM function. Zendesk users can see complete lead details, including which blog articles they’ve read.
- It’s not ideal for companies that use social media platforms for their customer support communications.
If you need a more robust service management solution, you may want to look into other options besides Hiver.
In Closing
Hiver is a simple tool that contains precisely what service and support agents need. Its simplicity allows for a clean user interface, making workflows more manageable, even from a mobile device. Its cost-effectiveness makes it ideal for small businesses.
It’s essentially a Gmail plugin that makes assigning conversations to team members of a centralized email a breeze. However, if you’re catering to queries for social media apart from Gmail inquiries, look for other centralized helpdesk options.
A free trial for seven days is available; no credit card is required.