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Ticket Volume: How to Measure It, Benchmark It, and Reduce It
Gorgias AI Agent Pricing, Explained
Introducing Helpdesk 2.0: Built for How Agents Work
TL;DR:
- Built directly from agent feedback, Helpdesk 2.0 fixes real workflow pain points. The redesign focuses on reducing friction and helping agents handle more context-heavy tickets.
- A chat-style interface replaces the old email layout. Conversations are easier to follow and resolve in one view.
- Customer context is shown beside the conversation in a right-side panel. Agents can view history, orders, and details without leaving the ticket.
- AI handoffs come with clear summaries. Agents instantly see what happened, what was tried, and what to do next.
- Navigation is simpler and faster across teams. Clean menus, structured queues, and multi-store access keep agents moving efficiently.
Helpdesk 2.0 starts with the people who use it most: the agents.
We spent time understanding customer support from the agent's seat. What do they reach for constantly? What slows them down? What does a better workday look like?
Everything we found is in this brand-new update.
Why we redesigned Helpdesk
Conversational commerce is the new standard.
In customer support, this means customers expect context to remain intact wherever they reach out, whether a conversation starts on social, moves to email, or ends on a call.
This new approach to support has also changed the agent's role. Recurring tickets, like order status checks, shipping updates, and returns, are now handled by AI. What lands in the agent inbox are edge cases that require human judgment and troubleshooting, or tickets that require the full picture.
However, the original Helpdesk was built for a different era of support.
Context was separated across views rather than built into the conversation itself. It's something one in five Gorgias customers flagged, through support tickets, NPS surveys, and conversations with our team. So, we got to work.
Helpdesk 2.0 is the result.
What's new in Helpdesk 2.0
Here's a look at everything that changed.
Read conversations the way they're meant to be read
Conversations have a natural rhythm, one that’s already found in every messaging tool we use. We brought that same layout into the helpdesk.
Say goodbye to the 2000s email interface and hello to chat bubbles. This updated design changes how quickly you can orient yourself and resolve the ticket in one go.
Chats with customers now look like real conversations, using the speech bubble style you’re familiar with on popular messaging apps.
Check customer history without losing your place
Checking a customer's history used to mean leaving the conversation, an extra step that interrupted what should have been a smooth workflow.
Now, past conversations open in a sidebar next to the active conversation. You can view a customer’s full history, search through their timeline, and open prior tickets without going to a new page.
Check past conversations, orders, and customer details in the brand-new Customer Timeline.
See order details the moment you open a ticket
Order information is easier to reference than ever. Open a ticket, and you instantly see the customer's recent orders, marked with product images and invoice details at a glance. Need to dig deeper? Click on an order, and the expanded information appears in the same panel.
For teams using custom integrations, apps are fixed in a quick-access integration menu on the right.
See order details, product images, and totals at a glance on the right panel, without leaving the conversation.
Pick up where AI left off
You shouldn't have to dig through a thread to figure out what AI already tried. Now you don't have to.
When AI Agent escalates a conversation, it includes a concise handover summary that mentions the issue, what actions were taken, and why it was passed to your team.
Escalated tickets include a brief AI-generated handover summary, marked in yellow, for quick reference.
Move faster across every store and team
We restructured and simplified the navigation. The left sidebar organizes everything into clear categories: Inbox, AI Agent, Marketing, and Analytics, so anyone on your team knows exactly where to go.
To quickly update your knowledge base or adjust a workflow, both now live right in the sidebar. For teams managing multiple stores, switching between them is just as straightforward, accessible from the sidebar, so agents can move between inboxes without breaking their flow.
Agents can switch between stores and their corresponding inboxes directly from the left menu.
A workspace that works the way agents do
Support comes down to the person on the other end of the conversation. We built Helpdesk 2.0 is to make sure they have everything they need to show up for that moment.
The best way to see the difference is to work in it. Start a free trial today.
Further reading
Thank you, interns!
Announcing the ReCharge integration
Recharge is the most popular subscription app in the Shopify app store and is the preferred solution for Shopify Plus stores. Over 10,000 Shopify merchants chose ReCharge to help sell products on a recurring basis, including stores like Dr. Axe, Hubble Contacts, and 5 Hour Energy.
The challenge is, when a customer has an issue with their subscription, the support team needs to jump between their helpdesk, Shopify and the ReCharge platform to fix the problem. This negatively impacts response time. Agents end up wasting hours per week going to ReCharge to skip a box for a customer, edit a subscription, etc. One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one place. A few months ago, our customer Darn Good Yarn asked us to build an integration with ReCharge. They no longer wanted to switch between ReCharge, Shopify and their helpdesk. This was completely aligned with our vision, so we decided to build it.
Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with ReCharge to launch this integration.
Here are the key benefits:
- Display ReCharge subscriptions next to support tickets.
- Edit ReCharge subscriptions in one click from your helpdesk: refund charges, skip monthly payments or cancel subscriptions from Gorgias
- When a customer ask to edit their subscription, you can send them an auto-response with the link to manage the subscription.
“Gorgias gives us a holistic view of our customers. This way we can provide them with fast and personalized help”
Nicole Snow, DarnGoodYarn
Let’s take the example of Averill John. She wants to cancel her subscription to the Yummy Box and has just sent an email to your support.
Here is how your helpdesk looks like:
You can see that Astrid has been assigned to this ticket and that this ticket is tagged “Ambassador”. It means that Averill is one of your super loyal customers.
On the right, you can see the ReCharge account data of Averill. Here, Averill has a monthly subscription to the Yummy Box and will be charged on the 15th of October.
Astrid can skip the October charge in one-click on the “Skip charge on subscription” button. It will immediately set the action within ReCharge. Response time? Less than 1 minute!
If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect ReCharge. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
Announcing the Aircall integration
One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to provide a unified support experience to your customers across all channels. A few months ago, some of our customers asked us to build a phone integration. Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer.
Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with Aircall to build this integration.
Aircall arms small-to-medium sized business (SMBs) with a phone system built for modern business. With zero hardware to manage, dozens of integration options to explore, and the ability to add local numbers in more than 40 countries, support teams can easily provide phone support in minutes.
Here are the benefits of this new integration:
- When a customer calls your company in Aircall, it creates a ticket in Gorgias and automatically matches it with the corresponding Shopify customer. This way, your staff can edit orders while they are on the phone with the customer.
- Your team sees all previous interactions they had with each customer, under their timeline.
- Get omni-channel statistics. Gorgias stats include Aircall phone data. For instance, you can monitor if you're getting more return requests over the phone or through Facebook Messenger.
If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect Aircall. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
We're joining the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program
We're integrating with LoyaltyLion!
Great news! Today, we're announcing a new integration with LoyaltyLion. LoyaltyLion is a digital loyalty framework that gives ecommerce stores innovative ways to engage and retain customers.
Our mutual customer Darn Good Yarn uses it to successfully increase customer retention. When they switched from Freshdesk to Gorgias to manage customer support, they wanted to leverage their loyalty program for customer support.
We used their feedback to build the integration with LoyaltyLion, which they have been using for a couple months in beta. Today, we're excited to make it available to all our users.
What is the LoyaltyLion integration?
Here are some of the benefits of this integration:
- Display how many points a customer has when they contact your support team
- When you respond to customer support requests, award loyalty points to customers directly in Gorgias
- Include the customer's personal referral url in your responses. This way, if they are happy about your support, they'll refer their friends to your store.
Overall, this allows your team to use your loyalty program for customer service.
"We love being able to issue our customers loyalty points directly from Gorgias! It's a great way to boost efficiency and also customer retention."
Chloe Kesler, Customer Support manager at Darn Good Yarn
How can I use the LoyaltyLion Integration?
The integration is immediately available on your Gorgias account. If you don't have an account, you can create one here. Then, follow the instructions in our documentation and you can get started!
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How to leverage customer support to increase sales?
Most customers are loyal to brands because they know what level of service they can expect. As a result, providing an above-average customer experience is key to increase repeat in sales.
It’s relatively easy to provide great support when you get started with your store: your team gets a few dozens of support requests a day, and they respond to them almost instantly. The thing is, this level of service is very hard to maintain as you scale. Response time usually drops, and most brands start using standardized macros to keep up with the pace, which is a poor customer experience.
Your sales have increased, good. Now, you need to get your customer support up to speed
Source: Gorgias customers during the Thanksgiving peak
At Gorgias, we’ve been chatting with 400 stores over the past year, and we’ve seen a lot of them working on crossing this “chasm”.
This post shares learning on how you can build a customer support organization that will scale with your business, and provide best-in-class customer service, which will drive customer retention.
Step 1: Run an audit of your support organization
A good place to start is to list the most common reasons customers are contacting you about. Go ahead and manually classify 200 tickets from your support inbox. This should take you about an hour. You can build categories from scratch, or use this spreadsheet of the most common requests for e-commerce companies we built.
Now, you should be able to understand what problems are causing the most pain to customers.
If a specific type of request is above 10% of requests, then it’s a good candidate for optimization. For instance, if you’re getting a lot of “where is my order” questions, here are a few things you can do to deflect those:
- Add a tracking section for customers to track their package on your site. Aftership can help here.
- Send updates to customers about issues with delivery, through SMS or email.
Now that you have a good understanding of the reasons customers are contacting you for, you can map the customer journey, and identify what actions your agents need to take to respond to tickets.
Later, you can use this for training purposes, and to identify optimization opportunities.
At Piper, we basically studied the whole customer journey and tried to identify all reasons why someone could contact us (based on previous history). This helped us quickly identify where customers were "blocked"
Finally, let’s analyze the efficiency of your team. Of course, every business is different, but you can use this table to figure out how efficient your agents are compared to other stores. A good metric to track it is ticket closed per month. Just make sure that satisfaction remains consistent.
Related: Learn more about the impact of live chat on sales. And see how Gorgias live chat can help you turn more browsers into buyers with chat campaigns.
Step 2: Figure out how you can improve the customer experience
Now, let’s work on creating “wow moments” for your customers. If you manage to exceed customers expectations when they contact you, you’re most likely to increase their loyalty and have them refer your store to their friends.
Here are a few ways you can create “wow moments”.
Make it easy for customers to contact you
You should be where your customers are. For example, if you have a Facebook page with a large audience, consider it as a real customer support channel. The point is, you should provide the same level of assistance across all support channels that your customer will use.
Also, don't be afraid to contact customers first, especially when they have items in their shopping cart. Offering help or a discount code at the right time could make the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.
Example: providing high quality support on Facebook
70% of customers consider Facebook as a live chat support. To maximize customer satisfaction, your response time should be no more than 1 min. You’ll then be listed as a very responsive page, which will encourage your customers to respond.
You can also leverage public posts to build relationship with your customers. Another easy way to facilitate customer communication is to remove the need for customers to repeat themselves. On your support platform, make sure your merge Facebook conversations with email tickets. This way, if the customer switches channel, your team will have access to the context of what the customer said before.
Related: Check out our trends and best practices for customer support.
Personalize every interaction with customer support
You should leverage every data point you have about the customer to personalize the way you communicate with them:
For how long they have been a customer
Their order preference
Their location
The days of the “we value your business” are over.
Always go an extra mile for your customers. If the customer asks for the status of their order, don’t respond only with the tracking number. Go get the order status on UPS so the customer doesn’t have to do it themselves when they’ll receive your email in the subway with poor network connection.
Another good thing to do is to use a specific tone with your customer, that matches the brand image you want to convey.
If you’re into gifs, you can use them to build a brand tone your own set of gifs, designed for your own brand, and use them in your support emails. You can hire an illustrator on Upwork for that, or build them yourself.
Related: Tips to respond to angry customer emails.
Step 3: Give your team the “ironman suit” for support
Now that you know the level of support you aim at giving your customers, and you know what actions your agents need to take to get the delivery info, create an RMAs, etc., you can start optimizing the process for them.
Display rich customer profiles for your agents
To personalize messages, your agents need to have access to customer data. You can leverage the standard Shopify integration from your help desk as a starting point.
Though, it can be relevant to connect other data points to your help desk:
- Display fulfillment data. Shippo is great for that
- Inventory data: Stitch, display inventory to the reps
- NPS responses
- Responses to last promotions
If you’re on Zendesk, enabling the Shopify integration is a good start: it shows how much the customer has spent, and the past orders.
Some Gorgias customers have pretty advanced widgets that display data from Shopify, Stitch & Shipstation. This way, all the customer information is available.
Empower your reps to perform actions from support conversations
You can create custom widgets for your help desk, so that your agents can trigger actions from your help desk. Here are the most helpful actions:
- Create a coupon
- Place a replacement order
- Cancelling an order
- Create an RMA
This is a bit more tricky to implement. You need to build a custom app with buttons that will trigger actions - there are some good tutorials for Zendesk, Freshdesk & Help Scout. At Gorgias, we’ve built integrations with Stitch, Shipstation to embed these actions in the product, and enable you to add your own.
Other 3rd party apps like Chargedesk enable you to refund customers in one click.
Step 4: Track your progress
Our goal here is to improve the customer experience to drive sales. A good way to track the efficiency of your support work is to compare the behavior of customers that have been in contact with customer support from those who have not.
Shopify helps you easily to this. You can create an integration between your help desk and Shopify to tag customers who reach out to support, using the Shopify API. Say you add a “customer_support” tag to them.
Then, you can use Shopify statistics to monitor how the cohort of customers who have been in touch with your support team behaves, and assess the impact of your efforts with customer support.
Another way to proceed is to tag orders that generated a support tickets. This way, if you work on improving delivery notifications, you can monitor the impact.
Final thoughts
Building a scalable support team that provides an amazing customer experience takes time.
Try to test different “wow moments”, iterate on the way you personalize messages, on the tone you’re using, and always track your progress. Among the teams we surveyed, several mentioned they managed to increase sales repeat by 30% after implementing these tactics.
Want to learn more about how customer support can improve your conversion rate and lead to more purchases? Check out our guides to ecommerce upselling and Shopify abandoned cart recovery.
Celery + Gorgias
Celery just released their API on Github, currently in beta. Here are some of the cool stuff you can do with it in Gorgias.
Display customer information
When you receive an email from a customer, you can connect your Celery account and see customer information (orders, shipping address, etc.). Here’s what it looks like:
To configure it, grab your Celery access_token, head to integrations, and add an HTTP integration using this URL:
https://api.trycelery.com/v2/orders?buyer.email={ticket.requester.email}
Then you can customize the sidebar to only show the Celery data you need to respond to customers. Click the cog and simply drag and drop elements you want to show.
Refunds, order change... without leaving tickets
Celery’s API enables you to perform a few actions from your favorite helpdesk:
- Edit an order
- Cancel an order
- Issue a refund
- Create a coupon
Here’s an example of how you can cancel an order from Gorgias itself. Say you already have a macro to cancel an order. Add an HTTP action to it, in this case:
https://api.trycelery.com/v2/orders/{ticket.requester.customer.data[0].number}/order_cancel
Then, when you use this macro and send it to the customer, it will automatically cancel the last order at the same time:
We hope this integration with Celery can save you time. If you'd like to try Celery with Gorgias, shoot us a note! At support@gorgias.com.
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