A helpdesk is software that gathers customer messages from different channels into one place, so a team can assign, answer and track them.
Most shops start with a shared Gmail inbox. That works until two people answer the same customer, a message gets missed, or nobody can tell how long people are waiting. A helpdesk fixes that with assignment, statuses, tags, saved replies and reports.
Ecommerce helpdesks also connect to the shop platform, so the order, tracking and customer history sit beside the message instead of in another browser tab.
Hobson is an AI helpdesk for Shopify stores and software companies. It brings your channels into one inbox, looks up the Shopify order, and drafts every reply for a person to approve. Views, routing, teams, tags and SLAs are there too, see workflow.