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MenuWhat is the easiest to use customer support platform for founding startup team?
We are checking out desk.com and zendesk. We need design customization features content management system to build out how to articles and FAQ. Just email support for now, one support person which is me, a founder. We are self funded... Which is the best system for the purposes of a startup with one support person?
Answers
zendesk. They have a pricing scheme for start-ups: http://www.zendesk.com/product/features/startups/
I'll second the recommendation for Zendesk. Their agent support portal is professional, highly customizable, and they are responsive and friendly. Their help desk portal is less mature, but quite a good value. We used it for a while with just one or two agents and loved it!
My only experience is using Zendesk, and while they're great for large teams, their pricing tiers can be frustratingly orthogonal to startup growth rates. You might want to use them for the long haul, starting immediately if your budget can handle it, or transitioning later. If you're using SalesForce for your sales teams, there are support modules there that can handle basic ticketing. It all depends on what you expect your support demands to be in the future.
I've built community and support from scratch at seesmic, uservoice, and launchrock. And, we worked through this same question at my current company, primeloop.com.
Desk, Zendesk, Uservoice, etc. are all great support platforms (and there are hundreds more). But I would skip all of those when starting off, and go straight to http://intercom.io since you can handle support through there, but you also get a full CRM and drip-messaging right out of the gate.
I'm more than happy to talk through your setup if you'd like to hop on a call?
I’d recommend Intercom as it is a perfect platform to start and then scale both, customer success & support teams without a need to develop custom features.
Asynchronous chats and automated messages that if emoloyed properly can help reduce support debt by sending out tailored recommendations, onboarding or announcement messages.
Wonderful tool for both, proactive and reactive customer support.
Related Questions
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In what situations should a SAAS company offer phone support? In what situations should it only be email support?
In my opinion, phone support is frequently requested but hardly ever needed. I worked at Twilio and as part of my role as a Developer Evangelist I responded to help desk tickets part of the week. We didn't do any phone support and we were able to help people effectively. The key is to be very detailed, thorough and courteous in all your correspondence and also to ask for clarification if you don't understand their questions. You should also have a library of online resources like documentation, frequently asked questions and forums that you can refer people to so they can easily find answers for themselves once you point them in the right direction. One caveat to all that though: I worked at another company that provided phone support but it was something you had to schedule and pay for in advance. At first, I thought it was crazy but our phone support people were busy all day helping customers. It wasn't a lot and it didn't even cover our costs but it prevented your phone from ringing off the hook and people calling to ask really stupid questions. Hope that helps! Also, if you're looking for technical advice on setting up phone support options I'd be glad to help you... over the phone! :)AW
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Are there standard ratios that are used to calculate first level support staff needed for a SAAS product that is a non-technical product?
Hi. I'm a Business Intelligence consultant with most of my customers being call centers. There are definitely guidelines you can apply but it will be based on several factors. Your question references ratios, which I assume means you would like to know how many agents per customer. That number will vary greatly depending on a number of other factors including: -what is your ASA target (Average speed of answer)? -what percentage of calls should meet the ASA? -are their penalties below a certain threshold (if less than 80% of calls meet ASA in 24 hours, for example) -how long are calls waiting when they don't meet ASA? -what is the call distribution by day of week, time of day and holiday v. non-holiday. -what is the average call duration? -what is the % of calls requiring escalation or call back versus calls resolved on first contact? To simplify it though, the two most important (IMO) will be call volume and your target for ASA (assuming you aren't answering then putting them back on hold, etc). To simplify though, the top 3 are: ASA, Call length and call volume. Regardless of the size of customer base. A good reporting system that combines live metrics and daily/weekly/monthly analysis will help a great deal. Feel free to set up a call if you'd like to talk about this in more detail.RL
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Good resources for structure/flowchart of an onboarding & ongoing support process?
I've helped lots of SaaS companies improve their onboarding processes over the years, but I just published my best (high-level) piece on doing this right: http://sixteenventures.com/customer-onboarding The bottom line is (though I suggest reading the entire article) you need to know what success looks like for your customer - what their Desired Outcome is - and then reverse engineer the steps necessary to get there. Going through that process will reveal the steps necessary to get them to that Desired Outcome outside of the product; we're not talking about functional steps within the product yet. Map this out using flow charts, line lists, mind map, white board, etc. The tool isn't important as much as doing this right. Now, once you understand the process required to move them from Step 0 - deciding to take action to reach their desired outcome to Step z - achieving their (at least initial) Desired Outcome, you can start laying out, designing, and building the in-product processes necessary to achieve those success milestones and ultimately, their Desired Outcome. You should then peg your email (or other lifecycle messaging) flow to those success milestones (rather than doing a timed follow-up), where each message is sent like this: "have they done this milestone? yes, then send this message to get them to the next one." Since each user and customer will achieve success on their own cadence, it's best to not have a timed autoresponder sequence but to actually trigger based on milestones reached. The good news is that this is relatively easy to do given the availability of lifecycle messaging services. See this post for more on this topic: http://sixteenventures.com/email-follow-up-sequence Hopefully this helps, but if you want more details or - more importantly - want to figure out how to apply this thinking directly to your situation, request at least a 15-minute call with me.LM
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Could anyone help me find any legitimate companies who hire for work at home positions, online customer service, etc., which aren't scams?
Most customer service jobs are going overseas, but this is a great website with only remote jobs that might be useful: https://www.remoterocketship.com/?page=1&sort=DateAdded It's a relatively new site, but they're doing a great job.LV
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What are the internet companies doing the best customer service? And is Zappos still top 10?
Way too many to list. The usual suspects include: Amazon, Westjet Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Apple etc. I'm focused on new(ish) tech companies and their approach to customer service such as: Silvercar, Airbnb, ZenPayroll, Oscar.MF
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