Hatchi Digital & GoDaddy Corporate Domains: From 425+ distribution lists to a centralised HubSpot help desk
GoDaddy Corporate Domains had built its customer communication around a dedicated distribution list for every client. With more than 425 lists managed in Outlook, keeping everyone informed meant every customer success manager received every client’s email. Hatchi Digital helped the team move towards a centralised HubSpot help desk with clear ownership, structured routing and reporting, while preserving the personal service their customers expected.
What was the challenge?
The distribution-list model had a practical purpose: give the whole customer success team access to client conversations so someone could provide cover when the assigned customer success manager (CSM) was away. But every new client meant another list to maintain and more email for everyone to read.
By the discovery workshop, the team was managing more than 425 distribution lists and roughly 450 client identities in Outlook. Smaller and unassigned accounts went to a shared support list, where two CSMs picked up requests on a first-come, first-served basis and tagged emails to indicate who was working on them.
Ownership depended on inbox habits rather than a shared process. There was no reliable view of email volume, response times or the types of issues customers raised. Follow-up tasks sat across calendars, paper notes and inboxes. Longer-running requests, including 60-day domain transfer holds and non-automated country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) work tracked in Jira, were difficult to keep visible.
The email structure also complicated the move to HubSpot. An initial setup passed messages through the client lists, a central distribution list and then a service account. That chain disrupted ticket attribution, assignment and visibility into where requests originated. After using it for about a week, the team returned to email. The transition needed a clearer technical path as well as a new way of working.
Our approach
Map the service process before configuring the system
Hatchi began with a discovery workshop in December 2025, working with the customer success leads to map their end-to-end support process on a Miro board. The aim was to understand how requests arrived, who should own them, when internal support was needed and what had to happen before a ticket could close.
Build ticket pipelines around the work
The main ticket pipeline gave requests a defined route: Unassigned, Assigned, Waiting on Customer, Waiting on Us, Jira/Internal Troubleshooting, Escalation and Closed. A second pipeline covered non-automated domain management, with tickets kept open until the associated Jira work was complete.
A ticket type became mandatory before closure, supported by priority and category tags for requests such as outages, DNS, domain registrations and billing. This gave the team a consistent way to manage work and created the foundations for useful service reporting.
Make ownership and out-of-office cover explicit
The new model centred on one shared support address connected to HubSpot. Tickets routed to the company’s CSM owner, while requests from unassigned customers entered a round-robin process. When an assigned CSM was out of office, routing fell back to round robin so coverage did not depend on everyone monitoring every conversation.
The team also explored syncing CSM ownership from parent companies to child companies as a further refinement to account routing.
Connect customer conversations with internal support
Hatchi completed a two-way Jira integration and set up Slack notifications to the Level 2 support channel when a Jira issue was created. An Outlook integration allowed CSMs to create tickets from existing email threads during the transition, bringing ongoing conversations into the new process.
The customer experience remained deliberately personal. Automated acknowledgements and closure emails were left out by design, preserving GoDaddy Corporate Domains’ white-glove approach while improving the organisation behind each conversation.
Equip the team and make performance visible
Hatchi supported the 11-person CSM team with training, individual setup videos covering personal inboxes, signatures and calendars, and a snippets library for common replies.
A dashboard built around the workshop requirements brought together ticket and email volume, meeting volume, average response time, ticket categories, days since last engagement and top-tier client tagging. The team gained a shared place to review service activity and account engagement.
Plan a controlled transition
When the chained email setup caused attribution problems, Hatchi recommended a clean reset and phased cutover. The revised approach added the service account directly to each client list, with a nine-account, three-CSM pilot planned before rollout in waves.
The migration plan also included comparing incoming volumes for a week, updating forms and signatures, and adding a temporary message directing customers to the new address. This created a practical way to check email flow before extending the change across the client base.
What were the results?
GoDaddy Corporate Domains now has a centralised help desk for customer communication, with clearer ownership and easier management of routing, out-of-office coverage and internal collaboration.
Customer requests can be managed through shared ticket stages, with Jira and Slack connecting the CSM team to the colleagues handling internal troubleshooting. Reporting gives the team visibility into service activity that was previously spread across individual inboxes.
The service operation also feeds the sales pipeline in HubSpot. GoDaddy Corporate Domains reported increased sales through this service-fed pipeline, connecting customer conversations with commercial follow-up. No quantified uplift is included here.
The takeaway
A distribution list can give a team access to a conversation, but access alone does not establish ownership, track progress or show where support is needed. For GoDaddy Corporate Domains, the change brought customer communication, account routing and internal follow-up into one connected process while retaining personal customer contact.
If your customer success team is managing shared email through distribution lists and individual inboxes, Hatchi Digital can help you design a HubSpot service process around how your team works and how your customers expect to be supported.
