Product Update: Custom Email Templates

Many of our customers support multiple brands and apps.

If you’re aiming to keep your various email support channels consistent with each brand’s personality — or if you just want to add some flare to your Agents’ responses — you are in luck! Using Helpshift’s new Custom Email Template feature, you can edit the appearance of your Agents’ HTML- and plain-text email responses to match each app’s unique look and feel.

How it works

1. Under Settings > Email Support, select the app for which you want to customize emails and hit “edit.” You will see an option to “Enable custom email templates:”

If you enable a custom template for a given channel, emails sent in response to issues from that channel will use the template.

Note: You can also apply custom templates to your company’s default Support Channel, so your Agents’ emails have a customized look/feel even when Helpshift can’t determine which app they are writing in about! If you support multiple apps but have not yet created custom support channels for each, you can learn more about the benefits of keeping your brands separate in this blog post.

2. Selecting “Enable custom email templates” will reveal an editor view with the default HTML and text email template, both of which are editable.

Here, you can edit the HTML version of the email template. (Remember to select “Plain Text” to edit the email format for users who have HTML disabled in their email settings.)

NOTE: Edits to either the HTML or plain text templates will be validated, so you don’t need to worry about breaking the template: invalid edits will throw an error pointing out the line that needs to be fixed.

You will be able to “reset” your custom template to the Helpshift default at any time. Alternately, you can revert changes made in a given session by selecting “Reset to Last Saved Template.”

3. Two fields are required for any email template:

• ‘From’ name [The name of the Support Channel]

• At least 1 forwarding address [Must be a valid email address and should not match any address used in other channels]

As with the default Helpshift email template, you will also have the option of adding, if you choose:

• A ‘From’ email

• App name (If you leave this blank, we will default to the name of the Support Channel)

• Auto-response Message (when this field is left blank, auto-response is considered to be turned “off” for this channel)

4. To preview your new template before publishing, click the “Preview” button to the right of “Save” at the top of the editor:

This will open a dialog where you can enter the address to which you would like to send a preview email (if you leave this blank, we’ll send the email to the address you use to access the dashboard).

An example mail will be sent to this address, using the customized email template and containing dummy data.

You can make edits and additions to your custom templates as often as you would like to keep your design fresh and stay up to date with rebrands or entirely new brands. Customizing the email experience for your different Support Channels will ensure that your brands retain their unique identity and your users always know who they’re talking to!