Launch guide for Gorgias adminsUpdated 4 hours ago

Welcome to Gorgias — an AI-powered customer experience platform built for ecommerce brands. To create the best possible experience for your team, it’s important to prepare your helpdesk to handle customer requests. This includes setting up channels for incoming requests, connecting your ecommerce store to centralize access to information, and adding agents to manage your support queues.

Follow this guide to create a solid foundation for your support operations. As you handle more and more tickets in your helpdesk, you can always adapt your setup to meet your evolving needs.

Note: You’ll need to be the account owner or an admin to follow the steps in this guide. If you aren’t the account owner, check with them to verify your permission level before getting started.

This guide is organized into phases, each building on the last. For the smoothest launch, we recommend working through the steps in the following order:

Before you start, make sure you’ve created a Gorgias helpdesk. Any setup you complete during the trial period will be preserved until you upgrade to a paid plan.

Step 1: Connect your channels

Channels are where your customer conversations originate. Every channel you connect creates a pipeline that turns inbound messages into tickets. Gorgias natively supports email, contact forms, live chat, as well as phone calls and SMS messages (add-on required). You can also browse our app store to connect social media channels like WhatsApp and Instagram DMs.

Connect email

Start by setting up email forwarding so that you can send and receive email from your existing support address in your helpdesk. Gorgias provides a randomly generated default email address for your account. You’ll use the default address to set up forwarding, and bring the emails sent to your existing support address into your helpdesk as tickets.

What you’ll need:

Access to your existing email service provider to set up forwarding
Access to your domain's DNS records to verify your domain

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Channels, then select Email.

For detailed setup instructions, visit our guide on setting up automatic email forwarding.

Tip: If you send fewer than 500 emails a day and use the Basic or Pro helpdesk plan, you can connect your email to Gorgias with the Gmail integration or the Outlook integration instead of setting up automatic forwarding.

Connect live chat

To give your customers a real-time way to connect with your team, set up live chat.

What you’ll need:

An ecommerce store or website to host the chat widget on
Optional: Connect Shopify to Gorgias before setting up chat to enable quick installation

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Channels, then select Chat.

For detailed setup instructions, visit our guide on configuring chat for your helpdesk.

Tip: Once you connect your ecommerce store to your helpdesk, your agents will be able to see order data alongside the chat ticket in Gorgias, enhancing their ability to provide real-time support to customers.

Connect other channels

Gorgias also supports Voice, SMS, social media, and contact form channels. Connect the channels your customers actually use — there's no value in setting up a channel you don’t expect any volume from.

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Channels, then select a channel from the menu.

For detailed setup instructions, visit our guides on contact form, Voice, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Tip: Start by setting up your highest-volume channels first, and add more once your team is comfortable with the ticket flow. Launching with too many channels at once might overwhelm a new team.

Step 2: Connect your ecommerce store

Once you connect your store, agents can get the details from your ecommerce platform that they need to support your customers right from Gorgias, no context-switching required. The available data and helpdesk features (like refunding orders from Gorgias) may vary, depending on which ecommerce platform you’ve connected.

Connect Shopify

Gorgias is designed with Shopify in mind, and when you connect a Shopify store to Gorgias, you unlock the full range of Gorgias features, like importing metadata, specialized revenue reporting, macro actions, and AI Agent.

What you’ll need:

Store owner or administrator permissions in Shopify

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Workspace, then select Store.
Click Add new store, then select Shopify.

For detailed setup instructions, visit our guide on connecting Shopify.

Connect BigCommerce or Magento 2

If you aren’t using Shopify to host your ecommerce store, that’s okay. Gorgias also supports BigCommerce and Magento 2. When you connect either of these to Gorgias, you’ll have access to customer and order data in Gorgias, though some features, like AI Agent, are only available for Shopify stores.

What you’ll need:

Store owner or store administrator permissions in BigCommerce or Magento

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Workspace, then select Store.

For detailed setup instructions, visit our guide on connecting BigCommerce or Magento 2.

Tip: You can connect multiple stores to a single Gorgias helpdesk. If you run more than one storefront, connect each one so agents can see order data across all your stores in one place.

Step 3: Configure your helpdesk

With channels connected and your store linked, it's time to optimize the helpdesk itself for your operations. This part of setting up your helpdesk will take the most time, but it doesn’t need to be completed all in one go.

Set business hours

Business hours define when your team is available. The business hours you set can affect features like response time calculations and chat availability, and can be used in rules to route or respond differently outside working hours.

Follow the steps in our guide to set business hours for your support channels.

Tip: Set business hours before you create any rules that reference availability. Rules that use "outside business hours" as a condition won't work correctly until business hours are configured.

Create macros

A good library of macros means your agents can resolve common tickets in seconds instead of minutes. Macros combine response templates with automated ticket actions (like adding tags, setting status, or updating priority), and agents can apply them in a single click. Build macros for your most common ticket types first — order status, returns, shipping delays, and discount requests are a good starting set for most ecommerce brands.

Before you start:

Connect all your channels so you know which channels macros need to serve.
Connect your ecommerce store so you can use order data variables in response templates.

Follow the guide to create a macro to get started.

Create ticket views

Views organize your ticket workload by grouping together conversations with matching ticket conditions. Gorgias creates seven default views automatically: Assigned to me, Unassigned, All, Snoozed, Closed, Trash, and Spam.

For many teams, the default views are enough to get started, especially if you don’t have a sense of what types of inquiries you’ll be handling. If you’re a more established team and are already familiar with how tickets flow through your support channels, you can build custom views to support your CX operations.

Learn how to create views and sections.

Tip: The Unassigned view is an important view for a new team — it's where every ticket that hasn’t yet been claimed by an agent will land. Make sure someone is responsible for monitoring it, especially while you’re still establishing your standard operating procedures.

Set up tags and fields

Tags, ticket fields, and customer fields are used to capture data from your tickets that you can review in your Analytics. Ticket and customer fields are structured and consistent, whereas tags can be created as needed to create flexible ticket tracking for your team. Once created, the fields and tags can be filled out or applied by agents — either manually or using a macro. They can be used as conditions in automations, allowing you to automatically route, prioritize, or update tickets based on the data attached to them.

Learn more about setting up tags, ticket fields, or customer fields.

Tip: Don't add ticket fields you don't plan to use in automation or reporting. Every extra field is something agents have to think about when resolving a ticket. Keep it lean at launch and add more as your team identifies genuine needs.

Step 4: Build your team of agents

By setting up your channels, store, and helpdesk before adding your agents, you ensure they can hit the ground running as soon as they join you in Gorgias. When you’re ready to add your team, follow the steps below.

Invite your agents

Before you start:

Review the Gorgias roles and permissions to determine what level of access your teammates should have when you invite them.

Where to start:

From your helpdesk, click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner.
In the menu, locate Account, then select Users and teams.

For detailed instructions, visit our guide on adding your team to Gorgias. You can also learn more about managing users and teams.

Tip: Invite a small group of agents first and have them test your setup before inviting your full team.

Step 5: Automate your workflows

Once your team has been using Gorgias for some time, you’ll start to notice recurring customer questions and procedures that can be automated. Workflow automation helps you eliminate repetitive manual work, freeing up your agents to focus on customer issues that require a human touch.

With Gorgias, you have a few different options for automation:

Create rules
Rule automations run automatically based on conditions you define, without any human involvement. You can use them to auto-tag tickets by channel, auto-close tickets after resolution, route tickets to specific teams, or send auto-replies outside business hours. Learn how to create rules in your helpdesk.
Set up order management (requires an AI Agent subscription)
Order management allows your customers to check their order status, tracking number, and shipping information, as well as create templated tickets when reporting order issues. With order management, your customers won’t need to interact with a human agent to get the information they’re looking for. Learn more about setting up order management.
Set up flows (requires an AI Agent subscription)
Flows are automated Q&A conversation scenarios that operate across multiple channels and assist shoppers with personalized guides, answers, and recommendations. With flows, your customers are guided through multi-step paths to find answers to their inquiries, rather than chatting with a human agent. Learn how to create flows.
Enable AI Agent (requires an AI Agent subscription, only available for Shopify stores)
AI Agent is trained specifically on your brand’s policies, website, and Shopify data to autonomously resolve customer questions, and take on ticket actions like adding tags and fields, processing returns, and even proactively engaging shoppers on your Shopify store with product recommendations. Learn how to set up AI Agent and unlock the power of automated customer interactions.

Next steps

Nice work! You’re all set up. As you spend more time in your helpdesk, you’ll determine how your settings can be adjusted to best support your team. It’s normal for things to change and evolve over time, so don’t stress about getting it right the first time.

If you’re ready to learn more, we recommend checking out the Gorgias Academy and registering for the Gorgias Admin Certification to build your proficiency in managing ecommerce support on Gorgias.

You can also join the Gorgias community to connect with other admins, share tips and tricks, and get early access to announcements from Gorgias on what’s coming up on our product roadmap.

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