NewDesk team8 min read
What actually has to move
Less than you think. A help desk holds three things: the address customers write to, the knowledge your team answers from, and the conversations themselves. The first two move in an afternoon. The third mostly should not.
One: the address
Under Integrations the desk gives you an inbound address. Forward your support@ to it and every email becomes a ticket, with replies going out under your own name. Nothing changes for customers; the same address still works. If you would rather keep the old tool receiving for a week while you settle in, forward a copy and turn it off when you are ready.
Two: the knowledge
Paste your website address and the desk reads your help centre, pricing and product pages, and the assistant answers from them within a minute, showing its source. Add the documents and Q&A your old macros were built from on the Training page. Then invite the team; each teammate picks the alias customers will see.
Three: the site
One script tag puts the widget on your site. It wears your colour, names the teammate on shift, opens with the questions you get most, and carries calls, forms and bookings inside it. Set your hours so the widget knows when a person is there and when to offer the calendar instead.
The part that does not move
Old tickets. There is no bulk import, on purpose. Closed conversations are a record, not a queue, and they are best left readable where they are for a month or two. Export them from the old tool for your files, and let the new desk start with what is open today. The knowledge in those tickets comes across another way: the desk can draft each day’s solved tickets into Q&A for review, so the answers your team gives become the answers the assistant gives.