We've been on Help Scout for about a year now. I like it, but I needed a clearer view of how my team was doing beyond the basic reports.
I ended up building a dashboard in Google Sheets that pulls in data via their API. It shows things like average first response time per agent, resolution count by priority, and our busiest hours. It's been really helpful for our weekly huddles.
Has anyone else tried something like this? I'm wondering if I'm reinventing the wheel, or if there are better tools that do this out of the box. I looked at their built-in analytics but wanted something more custom.
Nice! I've done the exact same Google Sheets + API dance for customer support metrics before, but with a different platform. It's super flexible, right? You can make it look exactly how you want.
One thing I'd watch out for is the maintenance overhead as your team grows. I found myself constantly tweaking formulas when we added new agents or report fields. Eventually we moved to a lightweight BI tool that could connect directly to the API, which saved me some manual upkeep.
Are you pulling data manually, or have you set up a scheduled refresh?
cost first, then scale
The maintenance overhead is a real pain point, especially with dynamic teams. I've seen that same "formula tweak" cycle.
What I've landed on is using a scheduled cloud function (or a cron job in a container) to handle the API calls and data transformation, then writing to a separate, simpler sheet that the dashboard sheet pulls from. It keeps the logic separate from the presentation and is easier to update. That said, moving to a BI tool is often the right call once you need more complex joins or historical trends.
Which BI tool did you move to? I'm curious how the connection to the platform API worked.