Help Scout for Ecommerce
Their next purchase starts with your support team
In ecommerce, great service is more than just a fast reply. Every order question, shipping issue, or return can make or break your customer’s loyalty.
Help Scout gives your team one place to manage it all, with Shopify data right in every conversation and AI that takes care of the repetitive stuff, so your team actually has time to focus on customers.
Trusted by 1,300+ customer-centric ecommerce teams
Growth is great, until your store’s support can’t keep up
Whether you’re running support out of a shared Gmail inbox or fighting with a bulky help desk, the cracks show fast. Every new promo or seasonal spike can leave your team buried.
You end up with:
No ownership
Nobody knows who’s handling what. Emails get forwarded and disappear. One customer gets two replies while another gets none. During your busiest weeks, the inbox turns into a guessing game.
No Shopify context
Your team is ping-ponging between their inbox and Shopify to look up order details or process refunds. The back-and-forth delays replies and adds up fast when you’re slammed.
No bandwidth
It takes hours every week to get through questions like, “Where’s my order? How do I return this? What size should I get?” The repetitive stuff leaves little time for proactive service and bigger picture projects.
No billing consistency
Some platforms charge by the ticket, so your costs surge when business picks up. For shops with seasonality or fluctuating order volume, forecasting your budget gets tricky.
Help Scout is built for the way ecommerce teams actually work
Responding quickly is important, but you also need the order details, customer context, and collaboration tools to make sure you’re delivering a great experience every time. Help Scout brings all of that together in a platform that finally feels intuitive.
Feel the joy of working in a single tab
When a question comes in, your team shouldn’t have to open Shopify, hunt for the order, copy a tracking number, and switch back to type the reply. It’s an annoyance to do it for one conversation, but when it’s happening across 50+ a day, it slows down the entire operation.
Help Scout brings your conversations, order and customer data, and team communication into one spot so you can get back to customers faster without missing the little details.
Check Shopify at a glance
View order details, shipping status, and customer history alongside every message. Process refunds, cancel orders, and edit details without opening another tab.
View social alongside emails & chats
Bring messages from Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp into the same place for email and live chat if you use it. Customers won’t know you’re using Help Scout. They’ll just know you responded quickly.
Know who’s on it
Assign conversations to specific team members so nothing sits unclaimed. Filter by assignee to see who’s working on what, and reassign in a click if someone’s out.
Loop in your team
Leave internal notes on any conversation to check with the warehouse, confirm a shipping detail, or tap in a manager. The customer never sees the back-and-forth, and your team gets all the details in context.
Stop doubling up replies
Help Scout alerts you when a teammate is already viewing or replying to a conversation, so two people don’t send the same customer duplicate or conflicting answers.
Route questions automatically
Set up rules to assign conversations based on keywords, subject lines, or channels, so returns go to one team member and wholesale questions go to another. You can also use tools like round robin routing to balance the workload automatically.
Stop spending hours on basic order updates
If you’re constantly working through basic questions on order status, returns, and shipping, reinforcements have arrived. With saved replies, automations, and AI, your team doesn’t have to handle it all manually.
That means more time for the conversations that actually need a human touch, like resolving a damaged shipment or helping someone pick out the perfect purchase.
Answer common questions in 2 clicks
Build a library of saved replies for your most frequent scenarios, like return instructions, sizing guidance, or shipping timelines. Insert them with a click and personalize with variables like the customer’s name.
Organize the queue automatically
Create workflows to tag, prioritize, and route conversations so you don’t have to. Refund requests get flagged, VIP customers get escalated, and your team spends less time tidying up the inbox.
Draft replies instantly
Generate a first draft with AI that’s based on your past conversations and documentation. Review it, tweak if needed, and hit send. No usage fees or limits.
Resolve common questions with AI Agents
AI trained on your content handles FAQs so your team doesn’t have to. With an average resolution rate of 73%, routine requests get fast, accurate answers 24/7.
AI that gets smarter over time
Add improvements or accept ones the system suggests automatically. You’re in total control as performance scales.
Summarize long threads
Catch up on conversations with AI-generated summaries, so you don’t have to read through a 15-message thread just to understand where a package got lost and what’s needed.
Reporting that reveals more than just volume
Get ahead of recurring issues before they snowball into bad reviews. Help Scout gives you the tools to track those patterns and turn them into improvements, whether that means updating a product listing, rewriting a return policy, or coaching up your team.
See which SKUs or policies drive the queue
Track conversations by product, issue type, reason for contact, and more. When one product keeps generating returns or a shipping policy confuses people, you'll have the data to act on it.
Hold everybody accountable
Measure every team member’s performance, from response times to satisfaction scores. Team reports make it easy to see who's carrying the load, where bottlenecks form, and whether new hires are ramping up at the right pace.
Plan for surges
You know the seasonal waves are coming, but when exactly will you need all hands on deck? With Help Scout you can drill down to identify your peak times and staff with confidence.
We have been able to continually operate as a lean service team with low costs… Over the last two years, our knowledge base visits have increased by 122%, while our email volume has actually decreased by 58%!
Answer questions before they hit your inbox
When shoppers have more ways to help themselves, everyone wins. Your team avoids time-consuming FAQs, and your customers get solutions without waiting on support.
Knowledge base
Create a branded help center with answers to your FAQs on return policies, shipping timelines, sizing guides, order tracking, and more. Have internal resources you need to store? You can spin up private help centers for your team too.
AI Agents
Give shoppers a path to instant help 24/7 with AI Agents. They use content from your knowledge base, website, and other designated sources to provide fast, reliable answers via your website or app.
Proactive messaging
Use in-app or on-site messages to promote sales, guide shoppers through checkout, recommend products, or even collect surveys and feedback. Messages help you drive engagement where it’s needed and get ahead of potential questions.
Embeddable support hub
Add a Beacon to your storefront so you can surface knowledge base articles automatically or let customers ask AI for help. Add them to your shipping policy page, product pages, or at checkout so answers are available right where customers need them.
Connect support to the entire business
Help Scout integrates with the tools your store already runs on. With 100+ integrations and well documented APIs, you can build the support workflows that fit your operations (with or without IT help).
Shopify
View and manage orders right from the inbox. Check on status, shipping details, customer history, and even process refunds without leaving the conversation.
Klaviyo, HubSpot, & more
Pull in marketing and customer data from your CRM so your team understands customer activity beyond support requests. They’ll know whether the customer is a first-time buyer or a loyal repeat shopper before they start typing.
Stripe
View payment history, subscription details, and transaction status alongside support conversations. Issue refunds and troubleshoot billing issues in the context of the conversation.
Slack
Keep your team in the loop right where they’re already working. Post Help Scout activity to Slack channels, notify assignees automatically, and stay on top of conversation updates.
WooCommerce & Magento
Not on Shopify? You can still bring in key customer and order details from platforms like WooCommerce and Magento directly into your inbox.
WhatsApp, Messenger, & Instagram
Bring social and messaging channels into your inbox so your team can reply to DMs and messages from one place, without logging into each platform separately.
Proven at scale for high-volume support
52.6% more tickets handled
Stores resolve significantly more conversations on average in year one.
Over 1.1 million AI resolutions
All types of stores are cutting down on repetitive questions with Help Scout.
Shopify-certified technology partner
As 1 of only 86 certified partners, Help Scout can meet all your scalability needs.
So much of how we can use Help Scout aligns with our values at Threadless — like the idea of ownership. As soon as a question comes in, our automatic workflow ensures we can take care of all actions in one swoop.
Essential guides for outstanding ecommerce support
Already using Help Scout and want to go deeper?
Explore our ecommerce hubYes. Our Shopify integration pulls order details, shipping information, and customer history directly into the conversation sidebar. Your team can view orders, process refunds, cancel or duplicate orders, and edit customer details without leaving Help Scout. We also integrate with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.
Yes. Help Scout works by forwarding your existing email account (support@, help@, returns@, etc.) into our system. Once messages land in your Help Scout inbox, you can use the platform to handle them. All emails sent from Help Scout will still go out using your existing address. While your existing address will continue to function the same, you’ll need to use Help Scout to manage its emails after you switch.
We partner with a company called Import2, which makes migrating old messages easy whether you're coming from Gmail, Outlook, Zendesk, Intercom, or many other platforms. Your conversation history comes with you.
Read more about Import2’s service.
Yes. Help Scout integrates with Instagram and Facebook Messenger, so DMs and messages flow into the same inbox as your email and chat conversations. Your team can reply from Help Scout and the customer receives the response on the original platform.
Help Scout uses per-user pricing with unlimited conversations. You pay for the number of team members who need access, not the number of tickets you receive. That means your costs stay predictable even during high-volume periods like Black Friday or holiday sales. Light user seats for warehouse staff, founders, or occasional contributors are also available at a reduced cost.
Always. Help Scout’s AI features are grounded in your own documentation and help content, so responses only come from sources you’ve approved. You decide how AI fits into the support experience. It can serve as a first point of contact, one option among many, or stay behind the scenes helping your team draft replies. Human help is always a couple of clicks away for any customer who needs it.
Learn more about Help Scout’s AI features.
Help Scout can be up and running in an afternoon. Connect your support email, set up the Shopify integration, invite your team, and start managing conversations. No development resources required. For teams that want to go deeper, our API and integrations make it easy to connect the rest of your stack.
Reach out to our support team or schedule a demo if you’d like to walk through what the setup process looks like for your team.
No. Emails sent from Help Scout go out using your existing email address with no Help Scout branding or ticket numbers visible to the customer. Your support will look and feel like a normal, personal email from your brand.
