How top manufacturing and logistics teams stay ahead

Manufacturing and logistics teams automate 48% more tasks than the average Help Scout customer. They use workflows to tag and route incoming messages based on conditions like subject line, sender, keywords, and wait time, so the sorting happens before anyone opens the inbox. The typical team automates tasks on 500+ conversations per month, with the top 10% handling over 6,500.

The most common workflow names show exactly what kind of in-between work they’re automating: “order status,” “returns,” “warranty,” “overdue conversations,” along with routing rules specifically for Amazon and FedEx. When these tasks happen automatically in the background, you don’t have to worry about them slipping anyone’s mind (or pulling them away from more important work).

An inbox sorted by newest-first treats a routine invoice question the same as a shipment stuck at customs. That’s why nearly half of manufacturing and logistics teams use Views. Think of them like saved filters that organize the queue around what actually matters, like conversations that have waited longest or anything tagged urgent. Logistics teams lean on them hardest, with half (51%) using custom Views.

You can see the prioritization instinct all over their accounts. “Urgent” ranks among the most common tags in both industries, and about 1 in 7 companies uses wait time as a workflow trigger to flag conversations that have sat too long. When something is about to slip, these teams see it coming.

42% of manufacturing and logistics teams on Help Scout run operational inboxes alongside customer support, twice the rate of the average company (21%). These are inboxes for dispatch, claims, orders, accounts receivable, and warehouse teams, all managed in one platform for added visibility and coordination.

Splitting communication by function means a billing question never buries an urgent freight claim, and every conversation lands in front of the team that owns it.

M&L teams are 47% more likely to use custom fields — additional labels on conversations that can fuel custom reports and help you answer questions about support volume. That discipline turns support into a source of operational intelligence. When every conversation is labeled, leaders can finally see which product line generates the most warranty claims or how much of the team’s week goes to order status questions. 

Teams also use custom fields to make sure tracking numbers stay attached to conversations across handoffs, so the next person to step in doesn’t have to ask customers to repeat themselves or go digging for answers.