At a glance
The percentage of Vortex IQ-filed Help Scout conversations that the merchant team has actually closed in the last 90 days. Designed to answer the merchant question: “is the audit programme working, or am I paying for findings that nobody actions?” Help Scout’s customer-centric, shared-inbox philosophy makes this card especially readable for owner-led brands; “conversations” feel less industrial than “tickets” so non-engineering owners actually look at the gauge.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Help Scout data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US owner-led DTC skincare brand on Shopify running Help Scout Standard (3 Mailboxes: Support, Press, Wholesale). Snapshot taken on 02 May 26 at 11:10 ET, looking back over the rolling 90 days from 02 Feb 26.
The card reads 66%. Five observations:
- The owner-in-the-Mailbox effect is visible. Help Scout’s shared-inbox philosophy means small brands often have the founder reading conversations daily. 23 closed in the Support Mailbox out of an estimated 32 filed there = 72% on its own, which is enterprise-grade. The drag comes from the Wholesale Mailbox where the founder is less involved.
- 66% is healthy for an SMB DTC brand on Help Scout. The product attracts customer-centric brands with smaller teams; benchmark is 60-75%. Above 75% sustained for a quarter often signals the audit thresholds are too generous (lower them; more findings filed lifts the impact even if rate dips).
- The Wholesale Mailbox is dragging the rate. 4 closed out of an estimated 9 filed = 44% resolution. B2B has a different rhythm; the wholesale rep does not use Help Scout daily. Set up a Help Scout Workflow that auto-tags Vortex IQ Wholesale conversations and notifies the rep via Slack; that single change typically lifts the Wholesale resolution rate by 15-20 points within 4 weeks.
- Pair with
shopify.refund_rate. If refund rate is steady or falling AND this card sits at 66%, the audit programme is paying for itself, the unclosed findings are probably the lower-impact ones. If refund rate is climbing despite findings being closed, the team is closing the wrong findings. - Help Scout’s lack of Pending semantics is a small advantage. Unlike Zendesk and Freshdesk, Help Scout’s Pending only means “snoozed waiting on customer”. The card treats it as unresolved consistently with the other helpdesks but the merchant rarely encounters edge cases around Pending. The data is cleaner.
- No Beacon noise. Vortex IQ does not file via Beacon; the merchant’s customer-facing Beacon widget conversations are excluded from this card’s population unless tagged
vortex_iq. This keeps the audit-programme metrics decoupled from end-customer support volume, which is the right separation.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Help Scout’s own dashboard: Help Scout does NOT provide a single “tag-scoped resolution rate” gauge, so this card is computed by Vortex IQ from the Conversations API. To verify it manually:Reports -> Conversations withFor multi-Mailbox accounts, switch the Mailbox selector at the top of the inbox or filter by Mailbox in Reports. Why our number may legitimately differ from Reports’ number:tag = vortex_iqfilter. Set the date range to last 90 days. Read the percentage ofClosedagainstTotal. That is the same calculation this card runs. Inbox -> Conversations -> Filters withtag:vortex_iqplus astatus:closedfilter, gives the numerator population at a glance. [Saved Search] in the inbox, save the filter for spot-checks.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
The rate dropped 15 points this week. What changed? Three usual causes, in order of likelihood:- Audit volume up. Vortex IQ filed more findings than usual. The denominator grew faster than the team’s closure rate. Often resolves itself within 2-3 weeks.
- Capacity loss. A senior agent on holiday, a key engineer focused on a feature deploy, or temp churn. Pair with Open Tickets (all); if global backlog is also up, capacity is the answer.
- Workflow drift. A Help Scout Workflow that auto-tagged or auto-routed Vortex IQ conversations turned off. Open Manage -> Workflows and confirm the
vortex_iqrules are still active.
- 75%+ : healthy. Audit programme is working; team has slack.
- 60-75% : normal for a maturing programme. Acceptable for owner-led brands.
- 50-60% : warn. Team is straining; investigate triage process.
- <50% : critical. Findings are filed faster than they are closed.
closed. The rate calculation is identical in spirit but Help Scout merchants do not have to think about archive transitions. One fewer edge case.
Should I optimise for a higher rate?
Not necessarily. A rate above 90% sustained for a quarter often means the audit thresholds are too generous (finding only obvious issues). Lower the audit threshold to surface more borderline issues; the rate will dip but the merchant outcome (lower refund rate, lower customer-service load) will improve.
A reopened conversation dropped my rate by 1 point. Can I exclude it?
A closed conversation that gets reopened is genuinely no longer resolved, so the rate correctly drops. If reopens are common (>5% of closed conversations), it points to a quality-of-fix problem, fixes are landing but not actually resolving the underlying issue.
Beacon (the in-app widget) drove a customer to file a Vortex IQ-style complaint. Does the conversation count?
Only if it carries the vortex_iq tag. Vortex IQ files findings via API and tags them automatically. Beacon-originated conversations from end customers are excluded from this card unless someone manually adds the tag (which is rare and usually accidental).
My account spans 3 Mailboxes (one per brand). Why does the gauge show a single number?
The card aggregates by default. To break out by Mailbox, build a Stacked Panel in the Vortex IQ Nerve Centre with multiple instances, each scoped via vortex_iq.mailbox_filter. Alternatively, use Help Scout’s Reports Mailbox filter for the same answer.
Why is the alert threshold 50% and not 70%?
50% is the breakeven point at which the team is closing one finding for every one filed. Below 50% the backlog grows mathematically; above 50% it shrinks. A 70% threshold would over-page in the first quarter of any new audit programme, when finding volume legitimately exceeds team capacity by design.
Help Scout is owner-led-friendly. Should the founder watch this card directly?
Yes, especially for brands with <5 employees. Help Scout’s shared-inbox philosophy is built around the founder being in the Mailbox; the resolution-rate gauge is the perfect single-number translation of “is the audit programme paying its way?”. For brands with dedicated CS managers, route the card to the CS lead and the engineering lead jointly. For founder-led brands, surface it on the executive dashboard.
My team uses tags for category breakdown. Does that affect the rate?
No. The card filters on tag:vortex_iq (the parent tag); category sub-tags (vortex_iq:catalogue, vortex_iq:checkout) are additive metadata that do not narrow the population. Use them for breakdown views in Reports, not for rate calculation.
Help Scout AI Assist replied to a Vortex IQ conversation. Did that close it?
No. AI Assist drafts replies; it does not move status to closed unless a human (or a Workflow rule) does so explicitly. The conversation stays Active until someone confirms.