Help Desk Documentation Platform Recommendations?

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! :)

If you are talking about online feedback through a website, I'd suggest Feefo or Hotjar. There are plenty of other solutions, but those are really easy to set up. You could also factor in customer feedback requests into any email marketing you are doing and this kind of thing can be automated through all the major email service providers.

As is my way, I have to answer tangentially: People hate reading documentation. Essentially no one will read the quick start guide, and those who do will have poor retention. This is not just a pithy quote, but driven by years of research into cognitive psychology. You cannot provide training around a complex (or bad) interface, and short training like onboarding guides have essentially no impact. If your responsibility is only the support systems: Ask the users. Carefully. You can't run polls and focus groups as they are not accurate but you can run (or hire people to run) "card sorting exercises." These are participatory design tasks where representative end users can help you understand how they would organize, group and label the information. That makes it more likely for users to find the information they need. Ideally, and if you have authority to mess with the design of the whole application, you don't even need help. No, really! I have designed complex applications (used millions of times a day) with NO help system. It can be done. For this domain, I would probably expect a help system, but one based more around digging into details, and presented in that way, instead of as help. For the interface itself, the application should instead guide the user, and if possible (based on information already entered, what you gather over time if it is something using biometrics or synched to records, etc.) automatically create the needed widgets. Users are very, very poor at customizing, no matter what they say. To remain sticky, make it easy, and personalize for them. I'd be happy to chat about this more based on your specific needs if you are comfortable sharing them with me.

HelpScout, ZenDesk or Desk.com. HelpScout (help desk software) would be a great start – less options but even when I ran a 6 person customer support team (with over 500 emails a day), we never needed the complex features of Desk.com. Have one person create 'saved replies' to quickly answer your customers in a cohesive voice and with consistent responses. (However, encourage your entire team to inject some of their personality!) This seems like a huge task, but if they dig through their sent emails, it can be done pretty quickly. Good luck!

If I understand you correctly, you're saying a customer agreed to pay you for services (product and/or support), either through posted prices and a shrink-wrapped license or through a written contract, and then you provided those services, and then they didn't pay? And you're asking whether it's "OK" that they didn't pay? Of course it's not OK! Is there any business who could operate in that fashion? The way it affects the customer relationship is you don't have a customer relationship. You have a situation where they are taking advantage of you. A relationship goes in two directions.