From signup to resolving your first ticket in 15 minutes. No consultants, no multi-week onboarding, no complexity. Five steps and you are live.
Create your HelpBot account with your work email. You will be asked for your company name, team size, and timezone - this helps HelpBot configure sensible defaults for SLA tracking and business hours right from the start.
Next, connect your support inbox. HelpBot supports Gmail, Microsoft 365, and any IMAP-compatible email provider. You can connect a shared mailbox like support@yourcompany.com or a dedicated address. HelpBot reads incoming emails, creates tickets automatically, and sends responses on your behalf - all from your existing address. Your users never need to learn a new system.
If you already have a support email with historical tickets, HelpBot can scan the last 90 days of messages to pre-populate your knowledge base. This is optional but recommended - it gives the AI a head start on understanding your common issues.
After connecting your inbox, HelpBot will show a confirmation with the number of historical messages found. You will see your dashboard with zero open tickets, ready for the next steps.
The knowledge base is what powers HelpBot's automatic resolutions. When a ticket arrives, the AI searches your KB for matching solutions before escalating to a human. A strong KB means more tickets resolved automatically and faster response times for your users.
You have three options for building your KB:
You do not need a massive KB to get started. Even 10-15 articles covering your most frequent issues will let HelpBot auto-resolve a meaningful percentage of tickets from day one. The KB grows automatically as tickets are resolved - every solution gets captured for next time.
Your KB dashboard will show the number of articles, coverage estimate (percentage of likely incoming issues that have a documented solution), and suggested gaps. Do not worry about filling every gap now - the system improves continuously.
SLA rules define how fast your team should respond to and resolve tickets at each priority level. HelpBot comes with sensible defaults: critical issues get a 30-minute response target, high-priority gets 1 hour, normal gets 4 hours, and low-priority gets 8 hours. You can adjust these to match your actual service agreements.
Escalation paths tell HelpBot what to do when the AI cannot resolve a ticket automatically. Configure who gets notified for each ticket category. For example, network issues might escalate to your infrastructure team while software license requests go to your procurement contact. You can set up as many paths as you need, or keep it simple with a single catch-all escalation to your support team lead.
Business hours matter for SLA tracking. Set your working hours and timezone so that HelpBot pauses SLA clocks outside business hours (unless you choose 24/7 coverage). This prevents false SLA breaches on tickets submitted at 11 PM that sit untouched until 9 AM - the timer only counts working hours.
The SLA dashboard will display your configured targets, current compliance rate (starts at 100%), and a live countdown on any open tickets approaching breach. Escalation paths will be listed with test buttons so you can verify notifications work before going live.
HelpBot integrates with the tools your team already uses. Integrations are optional - email-only support works perfectly - but connecting your existing platforms lets users submit tickets from wherever they work and lets your team manage everything without switching contexts.
Slack - Install the HelpBot app in your Slack workspace. Users can submit tickets by messaging the bot or using a slash command in any channel. Technicians receive assignments and can respond to tickets directly in Slack threads. Status updates post automatically.
Microsoft Teams - Add the HelpBot bot to your Teams environment. Same functionality as Slack: ticket submission via chat, technician notifications, and status updates. Works with both personal chats and team channels.
Jira - Connect your Jira project to sync tickets bidirectionally. Tickets created in HelpBot can automatically create Jira issues (useful if your engineering team tracks bugs in Jira). Status changes sync both ways so nothing falls out of sync.
Each integration takes about a minute to set up - mostly just clicking "Authorize" and selecting which channels or projects to connect. HelpBot handles the rest.
After connecting integrations, you will see a green checkmark next to each connected platform on your integrations page. Send a test message through each channel to confirm tickets are created correctly in HelpBot.
Before going live, HelpBot runs a quick readiness check. It verifies your email connection is active, your KB has at least a few articles, SLA rules are configured, and escalation contacts are valid. Any issues are flagged with one-click fixes - nothing that should take more than a few seconds.
Click "Go Live" and HelpBot starts processing incoming emails and messages. The first few tickets will appear on your dashboard in real-time. You will see the AI classification happening - each ticket gets a category, priority level, and confidence score. If the AI finds a KB match with high confidence, it drafts a response for you to review and approve (or auto-sends, if you enabled that).
For your first day, we recommend keeping auto-response in "review mode" so you can see how the AI handles tickets before letting it respond independently. Most teams switch to auto-mode within 2-3 days once they are confident in the AI's accuracy. You can always override or correct any AI response, and every correction improves future accuracy.
Your dashboard will show incoming tickets in real-time with AI classifications and suggested responses. Response time, resolution rate, and SLA compliance metrics update live. Within the first hour, you will have a clear picture of how HelpBot handles your specific ticket patterns.
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