Introducing Custom fields

Hiver helps teams collaborate and deliver quality support to customers, vendors, and employees from the comfort of their inbox. To continue to help businesses transform the way your team collaborates – we’ve launched custom fields. This addition will help teams create segments for each business’s requirement to categorize, track, and manage tasks across teams tailored precisely to required business workflows. 

Tags and labels have been used to derive information from conversations and categorize them. However, Tags are harder to manage since each user can create, edit, or delete their own. They are not maintained separately from records, and they only exist if used on at least one record. Additionally, tags can lack uniformity due to differences in spelling and terminology. 

We’ve heard from our users that these challenges make it difficult for teams to collect data regarding customers or conversations. Without the ability to standardize the collection of data across teams – teams couldn’t derive meaningful outcomes such as creating custom views, and automation rules and use the data to derive actionable insights. But, this challenge can now be solved.  

Introducing Custom fields

Custom fields allow you to create unique fields to capture specific information directly within your shared inbox against each conversation. Whether it’s tracking an order number, noting a customer’s subscription level, revenue potential, issue type, or recording a project’s deadline, custom fields provide the flexibility to tailor data capture to your business’s exact needs.

Custom fields can be set up in the Admin panel at the shared inbox level, as explained below:

1. Click on the ‘Custom Fields’ option to set them up for a shared inbox..
2. Choose the type of custom field you want to create. You can pick between different formats such as Dropdown, Number, Date, or Text.
3. Enter the details for your custom field, such as the name and any predefined options for dropdowns. It will be ready to use within your shared inbox, next to every conversation.

How to start using custom fields

Depending on business requirements, you can choose to create any of the four kinds of custom fields. For example, in the screenshot below, we’ve created custom fields to categorize the query types that are received in a shared inbox.  With this option available in a shared mailbox, queries can be tagged as General, Refund/Pricing/Discount, Bug/escalation, and feedback/feature request query type.

Once set up, custom fields will appear in the right panel of each mail conversation as shown below. Your team can use these fields to enter and view specific information related to each conversation. For example, you can set up priority, follow-up date, add user ID, or the conversation type. This structured approach ensures that all necessary information is readily available.

Once you have set up the custom fields, and your team has started using them, there are three ways in which you can start using them to improve your team’s productivity:

#1 Use custom fields to create custom views

Once set up, custom fields will enable you and your team to create ‘Views’ to organize conversations. 

For instance, you can create a view of all emails related to a specific project by filtering them on a custom field for project names. You can also create views to monitor high-priority customer inquiries by filtering on a custom field that captures priority levels.

Or for the screenshot below, you can create a view to see pricing conversations, or bug-related conversations together. 

#2 Analyze conversation data using Custom fields

Understanding your conversation data is crucial for improving your team’s performance and customer interactions. Hiver’s custom fields feature allows you to take control of your data in ways that provide actionable insights. Here’s how:

1. View analytics on your conversations

You can use Custom fields to filter and sort conversation data for insightful analysis by selecting fields from the “Grouped by” drop-down, you can filter and sort data based on specific criteria.

For example, you can filter conversations by a custom field such as “Priority” to see how many high-priority conversations you received, how quickly were they responded to, and which team members handled them.

If you notice that the average handling time on high-priority conversations is high. Then, you can use this insight to reallocate resources or hire new team members to distribute workload effectively. An insight like this can help your team improve customer satisfaction and reduce average response time.

2. Create custom reports

If you need to dive deep into how your team is performing, then you can always create custom reports.  With custom reports, you can analyze conversations by assignee, status, tags, values from the created custom fields, and more. 

For example, you can create a report that compares response times and resolution times for high, medium, and low-priority conversations for all team members. This helps team leads identify whether high-priority issues are being resolved efficiently or if certain team members are overwhelmed. 

Such reports can then be shared with leadership to highlight successes or pinpoint bottlenecks that need attention.

3. Export data

In the Exports section, you can include custom fields in your CSV exports. This flexibility allows you to select or deselect specific custom fields, tailoring the exported data to your needs.

Exporting your data with custom fields is more than just a backup—it’s an opportunity to conduct advanced analysis. By exporting data, you can slice and dice it using external tools like Excel, enabling more complex data manipulation and visualization.

For instance, you could combine Hiver data with sales figures to identify correlations between customer interactions and revenue. Exported data also makes it easier to share insights across different departments, fostering collaboration and strategic planning.

#3 Use Custom fields to create rule-based automations (Coming soon)

Managing customer conversations can be a daunting task, especially when juggling multiple priorities and ensuring timely responses. That’s where automation comes in. You can now set up rule-based automation workflows using custom fields, to streamline your email management like never before. Here’s how:

1. Use Custom fields as Triggers

A Trigger is an event or action that starts an automation flow. Custom fields in Hiver can act as triggers for automation workflows. For instance, if you have a custom field labeled “Priority,” you can set it as a trigger for your automation to manage high-priority conversations better. This will work such that, whenever a conversation’s “Priority” field is updated, the automation can kick in. This ensures that any change in priority automatically prompts the next steps in your workflow.

2. Use Custom fields in Conditions

A condition is a rule or criterion that controls the flow’s execution based on specific criteria. Once you’ve set up your trigger, you can define specific conditions that must be met for the automation to proceed. Continuing with the “Priority” example, you might set a condition that the automation only triggers when the “Priority” field is updated to “High.” You can add multiple conditions, like “hours passed since”, “no external reply is received” in the last N hours. This allows for more granular control over when and how your automation rules are applied.

3. Use Custom fields in Actions

Actions specify the steps that should be performed on the selected conversations when the trigger condition is met. Whether it’s assigning the conversation to a particular team member, adding a note, sending a predefined reply, or updating another custom field for the conversation. These actions ensure that the appropriate response is always triggered.

Read more about using automation workflows in Hiver here.

Custom fields are easy to set up and offer instant benefits

To conclude, Custom fields are easy to set up in Hiver and offer the flexibility, structure, and collaboration tools that modern teams need. Custom fields are the next set of superpowers for your team to be able to organize and manage emails with newfound precision. 

So why wait? It’s time to work smarter, collaborate better, and streamline workflows. 

Sign up for a free trial today, and experience how Hiver doubles up your inbox as a help desk and helps you manage your emails efficiently.