The decision to migrate your customer service hub is a monumental one. You are not just moving software; you are relocating years of crucial customer conversations, historical context, and carefully built knowledge bases.
Successfully transitioning from Trengo to Help Scout requires meticulous planning, a strong understanding of data dependencies, and careful execution.
This guide breaks down the process into actionable steps to ensure a smooth transition for your team and your customers.
Define Your Migration Scope
Before initiating any data transfer, we must clearly define what data is moving, what configurations need to be rebuilt, and what legacy items must be archived.
What Will Be Migrated via API?
The bulk of your historical customer data and structural elements can and should be migrated via API, although some require a careful programmatic workaround:
- Foundation Data: This includes your core customer data, such as Contacts/Profiles (which map directly to Help Scout Customers), and organizational groupings, like Contact Groups (mapping to Help Scout Organizations).
- Structural Configuration: This covers defining metadata, such as Custom Field Definitions and your knowledge base structure (Help Centers mapping to Help Scout Sites, Categories mapping to Help Scout Collections/Categories, and Articles).
- Transactional Data: Core communication objects like Tickets (Help Scout Conversations), their associated Ticket Messages (Help Scout Threads), Notes (for contacts or profiles), and Labels (Help Scout Tags) all move over. Similarly, Quick Replies (Saved Replies) move via API.
What Must Be Configured Manually?
While the API allows you to retrieve data on system components, setting up the people and environments often requires manual provisioning to ensure proper access controls.
Users (Agents) and Teams must be set up early, as their IDs are crucial for assigning migrated tickets. Certain API objects, like Webhooks, must be recreated and pointed to the new Help Scout environment.
What Must Be Archived or Rebuilt Manually?
Certain historical operational data lacks a direct migration path to Help Scout and should be archived from Trengo for reference:
- Historical Reporting Data: Trengo offers granular APIs to retrieve Reporting Data (metrics, reports, and aggregates). However, this raw historical data cannot be pushed directly into Help Scout's reporting structure; exporting it as CSVs or archival files is the recommended approach.
- Channel Logs and Templates: Specific transactional data, such as VoIP Call Logs, and channel-specific data like SMS or WhatsApp Templates/Uploads, must often be manually archived, as they pertain to channel-specific functionality that will be reconfigured in the new platform.
Prepare Help Scout for Data Import
The success of your migration relies on having the destination structure ready before pouring in historical content. We build the skeleton first:
- Users and Teams: Begin by provisioning all your Agents (Users) in Help Scout. Simultaneously, recreate your existing organizational structure by creating Teams. This step establishes the necessary IDs needed later when assigning historical conversations.
- Define Custom Fields: Identify the custom attributes used on your Trengo Contacts, Profiles, and Tickets. Create corresponding Custom Field Definitions in Help Scout to mirror this data structure.
- Knowledge Base Structure: Rebuild the container structure for your self-service content. Create the necessary Help Scout Sites (from Trengo Help Centers). Within those sites, establish your primary Categories (Collections).
Migrate Objects
This phase moves the historical data using the necessary dependencies, ensuring that containers exist before content flows into them.
- Labels (Tags) and Customer Organizations:
Start by setting up the metadata structures. Retrieve all Labels from Trengo and create them as Tags in Help Scout. Next, migrate your Contact Groups over to Help Scout as Organizations.
This creates the corporate entities needed to link customer profiles in the next step. - Contacts and Profiles (Customers):
This is where customer history begins. Iterate through your Contacts and Profiles in Trengo and create corresponding Customer objects in Help Scout.
Critically, once the Customer object exists, immediately attach any corresponding Custom Field Values that define that customer (e.g., subscription tier, regional code).
Be sure to migrate all existing Notes associated with these records as well, inserting them as private internal notes on the new Customer profile. - Knowledge Base Content: With the basic Knowledge Base structure defined (Sites and Categories), you can now flood the system with content. Iterate through all Articles found in Trengo and recreate them within the appropriate Help Scout Categories/Collections.
- Tickets (Conversations) and Message History: This is the most complex phase, involving sequential creation steps:
- Create the Conversation: Retrieve historical Tickets and create them as Help Scout Conversations. Ensure the conversation is linked to the correct Customer (migrated in step 2) and placed in the correct Inbox.
- Assign Status and Attributes: Immediately apply all relevant attributes, such as assigning the ticket to the correct User or Team using the IDs created in the preparation step, and tagging the conversation using the appropriate Labels. If the ticket was closed, update the status accordingly. Also, update any remaining Custom Field Values attached to the ticket itself.
- Reconstruct Messages (Threads): The final, crucial step is rebuilding the communication timeline. Retrieve all Ticket Messages in chronological order. These messages must be imported into the newly created conversation as Threads. Depending on the original format, use tools to specifically import the original text or email message formats.
- Create the Conversation: Retrieve historical Tickets and create them as Help Scout Conversations. Ensure the conversation is linked to the correct Customer (migrated in step 2) and placed in the correct Inbox.
- Quick Replies: Finally, gather your existing Quick Replies and recreate them as Saved Replies in Help Scout.
Post Migration Configuration
After the bulk data transfer is complete, you must configure the remaining operational tools manually to reactivate your customer service environment.
- Webhooks Activation: Recreate all automated Webhooks that were active in Trengo, ensuring they are correctly pointed to the new endpoint services they trigger.
- Automated Workflows: Any automated responses, routing rules, or workflows used in Trengo must be manually reviewed and rebuilt entirely within the Help Scout workflow editor. This is often the best time to review and optimize old processes.
Insider Secrets
Success in this migration often lies in anticipating minor technical challenges and adhering strictly to data formats.
- Date Precision is Key: When handling reporting or audit logs, remember that time fields, such as those used for Trengo Reporting v2 data, must typically be submitted and queried using the rigorous ISO 8601 JSON encoded format. Adhering precisely to this format prevents time stamp errors.
- Content Limits and Rates: Be mindful that Help Scout enforces rate limits on Docs API requests, which are tied to the number of Sites you run. If you have a large knowledge base, you must strategically pace the migration of Help Center Articles to avoid hitting rate limits.
- VoIP and SMS Logs: If you relied heavily on Trengo to manage specific channel history like VoIP Calls, note that the listing APIs in Trengo may specifically exclude records generated outside of certain partner integrations, such as only listing calls made with Twilio. You may need to manually source complete logs from third-party services.
- Focus on the Customer Record: Remember that a contact already created via one channel may only return a HTTP 200 response when recreated, returning the existing details instead of generating a new customer record. Your migration script should account for this behavior when processing high volumes of customer data.
Summary
Migrating from Trengo to Help Scout is a substantial project, but approaching it systematically ensures data integrity and continuity.
By tackling foundational elements like Users and Custom Fields first, then moving essential resources like Contacts, Organizations, and your Knowledge Base, and finally importing the intricate message history layer, you can effectively relocate your customer service history.
Always prioritize archiving non-transferable data, such as detailed Reporting Metrics, Boards/Cards, and specific channel logs, to maintain complete organizational records and allow your team to start fresh in Help Scout with full historical context.
If you’d rather focus on your revenue instead of wrestling with mapping sheets and pagination loops, ClonePartner can handle the full migration for you. Every project gets a dedicated engineer who understands the nuances of both APIs and ensures zero downtime.