HelpNest — Product Requirements Document

1. Problem Statement

Small support teams juggle customer questions across email, chat, and social DMs. Messages get missed, two agents reply to the same ticket, and there is no view of response times. HelpNest unifies every channel into one shared inbox with clear ownership and SLAs.

2. Product Vision

The fastest way for a small team to run support like a big one — a shared inbox that feels like email but adds assignment, collaboration, and reporting, without enterprise bloat.

3. Goals & Success Metrics

• Activation: a team connects an inbox and resolves its first ticket within 15 minutes.
• Efficiency: median first-response time under 2 hours for active teams.
• Retention: 70% of teams still active after 60 days.

4. User Personas

• Sara — Support Lead: needs visibility into volume, response times, and who is overloaded.
• Tom — Support Agent: wants a clean queue, no duplicate replies, and quick canned responses.

5. Functional Requirements

Shared inbox

• Connect email, live chat, and social channels into one queue.
• Assign tickets to agents; show who is replying in real time (collision detection).

Productivity

• Canned responses, internal notes, and tags.
• SLA timers with breach alerts.

Reporting

• Dashboard for volume, first-response time, and resolution time by agent.

6. Non-Functional Requirements

• New messages appear in the queue within 5 seconds.
• 99.9% uptime; data encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Role-based access (admin vs agent).

7. Data Model

8. Subscription Tiers

• Starter: 1 inbox, 3 agents.
• Growth: unlimited inboxes, SLAs, reporting.

9. Milestones

• Phase 1 (4 wks): email inbox, assignment, collision detection.
• Phase 2 (3 wks): SLAs, canned responses, tags.
• Phase 3 (3 wks): chat + social channels, reporting dashboard.

10. Risks & Open Questions

• Email deliverability/spam handling needs early attention.
• Open: build live chat in-house or integrate a third-party widget for v1?