While Chat is the quickest way to automated support, your Help Center is an even more robust resource for customers. You can combine Help Center articles with all the same automations you’d find in Chat for an extremely helpful self-service experience.
If your Chat and Help Center are both hosted on Gorgias, they can work together to automatically suggest Help Center content when customers ask questions in Chat.
Gorgias uses AI to scan every incoming live chat message. When a message could be answered by the content in your Help Center, Gorgias will serve the customer a link to that article, which they can read within Chat, before pinging your support agent.
Just like Flows, the automation is followed with a question: “Was this helpful?” If the customer says Yes, the interaction is successfully automated. If the customer says No, then a live chat ticket (or contact form, if you don’t have live chat enabled) is created.
Article Recommendations doesn't have to stay in Chat either, you can also send customers automated Article Recommendations via email.
“My preferred feature is Article Recommendations. When a customer buys a product for $3,000 on my website, they need to know everything about the product. They cannot wait for us to get these questions answered. Article Recommendations are the best for that. And actually, the accuracy of your Machine Learning is pretty scary 😂 it's so good!”
— Arda Onal, Founder of Ariel Rider
One important myth we’d like to clear up right away: You can use Article Recommendations, even if you don’t want to publish the Gorgias Help Center on your website. Article Recommendations can recommend articles from all published Help Center, even if it's not embedded or linked on your website.
A few important tips to get the most accurate Article Recommendations possible:
Here's a great example of Help Center content optimized for Article Recommendations, from Ariel Rider.
Great news! Article Recommendations are available via email as well as live chat.
Flows and Order Management are useful in Chat — plus, you can add them to the Help Center to give customers another path to automated resolutions.
Here’s an example of all three types of automation in premium drinkware brand BrüMate’s Help Center:
Customers can track orders, report issues, use the Fit My Drink Flow to find the right product, or get returns information — all in an instant, without waiting on an agent. Here’s what Flows look like in the Help Center:
While BrüMate doesn’t have them activated, you can also let customers request returns and cancellations in the Help Center, too.
Check out these guides on adding Order Management and Flows to your Help Center.
Your Help Center is only as effective as it is discoverable. We recommend putting it in your Top navigation, Footer navigation, and Support/marketing/order confirmation emails.
Here's an article on how to make these changes in your Shopify store.
ALOHAS links its Help Center at the very top of the website to give customers a clear place to find answers and resolve issues.
Loop Earplugs also prominently links a Help Center in the top navigation:
Sol De Janeiro links their Help Center in the footer of their website:
In addition to your website, you can also link your help center in automated emails, like support emails or your post-purchase Flows. Similarly, linking directly to your returns portal in order and delivery confirmations is a great way to funnel returns requests directly to an automated solution.
Princess Polly links their Help Center in automated emails that let customers know the team received the request.
Above, we recommended linking your Help Center to your website header or footer. In addition, consider linking to your returns and order tracking portals to help customers find exactly what they need in as few clicks as possible.
The Bradery links to their returns portal and order tracking portal, as well as the general Help Center, in their website footer:
Don’t risk confusing customers with a clever name for your Help Center. Use a clear, short name when linking to your Help Center, such as:
Here are some examples from Sol de Janeiro, Shinesty, and Nomad:
The most impactful Help Center articles are full of helpful content that customers can access directly, or via Article Recommendations in Chat. But even if you don’t have articles, you can activate your Help Center to let customers track and manage their orders.
For example, LEUPP Watches has an active Help Center without any articles. They link the Help Center in their website’s main navigation to give customers an automated process to track orders and report issues.
Need help to launch your Help Center? Check out this guide.
Gorgias offers an AI Library of AI-generated articles, which study your prior interactions and generate Help Center content. This AI-generated content helps you identify common questions from your customers and draft content based on how your team has answered.
You can find your AI-generated articles in Settings > Help Center > ✨ AI Library:
Learn more about the AI Library.
Multiple Help Centers, knowledge bases, and FAQ pages may confuse your customers when they’re trying to find an answer. It also means your customer service team has to keep multiple resources up to date. So, focus on one Help Center and funnel as much traffic as possible there. After all, that's where your Flows and Order Management live.
Do you have an old Help Center or FAQ page from Zendesk, HelpDocs, Intercom, or Re:amaze? Here’s a step-by-step guide to migrating your old Help Center’s content to Gorgias.
Automate is a Gorgias product that provides instant, automated answers to common questions via your email, Help Center, and widget. Your customers can get a quick response (and resolution) around the clock, even when a live agent isn’t available. Gorgias Automate includes Quick Responses, interactive Flows, Order Management, Autoresponders, and Article Recommendations.
Gorgias Automate pricing scales with your usage, just like the Gorgias helpdesk. Pricing starts at $30/month for 30 automated interactions and scales up to custom enterprise-level plans. One note: The more automated interactions you have, each one costs less and less. For example, 5,000 automated interactions per month is $2,500 (meaning each one is only $0.50, compared to $1.00 for the lowest plan).
Two features drive the most automation are Quick Responses and Article Recommendations. Start with these two to quickly unlock the potential of automation!
We tested these methods with ecommerce brands and found they consistently achieved at least 30% automation when implemented. The top 5% of brands achieve up to 45% automation rate with Gorgias Automate.
Contact your CSM or, if you’re a Basic or a Pro customer, you can schedule a call with our automation consultants team. If you’re not a Gorgias customer, book a call with our team using the link at the end of this playbook.