5 ms·

How We Support 1,650 Customers with One Representative

91 points by duaneb 11y ago

acconrad 11y ago
I'd be asking for a raise if I were that rep.
- stevenklein 11y ago
  +1
  - alexivanovs 11y ago
    +2 = 3
- pbreit 11y ago
  Well, if I'm reading the chart correctly, it's about 15 emails/day. Maybe not raise-worthy?
- jo909 11y ago
  They rotate support duty, every engineer and even the founders do it for a week each.
  - odonnellryan 11y ago
    This is the most important part of the email! I almost got fired once for very modestly bringing up the idea at a previous role ;)
itsdevlin 11y ago
This doesn't seem unreasonable. As a data point, we're just shy of 10k customers with one full-time support person (and two part-time). In my experience, it was the process of setting up the KB and process by which you'd answer tickets that was the most arduous. 0-10 users, easy. 10->100 OMFG EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE. 100->n becomes just an optimization problem.
gscott 11y ago
I ran a groupware platform that had over 1,000 daily users on it myself with about 30 new organizations signing up to use it every day. The key thing was to create help videos and help hover icons everywhere possible. Eventually it was self-supporting no one ever had questions because the answers were all right there.
huhtenberg 11y ago
Whether or not this number is notable depends squarely on the nature of the product/service. One-man shareware shops routinely have tens of thousands customers and handle all of the support in addition to doing everything else. And hardly anyone ever brags about this.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  I worked for several years as corporate IT support back in the day. Each employee represented around 2K user's nation wide. It was very busy and we didn't do a good job (understaffed) but we did everything. Supported ALL the applications. All hard ware. PC upgrades. You name it. You handled your 50 calls a day. It sucked, that's why we all left, but 2K+ for one person for one application stack... not that crazy.
- ytpete 11y ago
  And that's true in open-source too. For example the Brackets code editor project (which I work on sometimes) has over 250,000 users, yet there's only about a dozen people who regularly respond to bug reports, IRC, forum questions, etc. -- half of whom are volunteers. That's a much higher ratio than 1,650:1...
myohan 11y ago
I think the challenge is not in the numbers but in the quality of support and these guys are doing it well and substantiating how they did it with solid evidence.
philip1209 11y ago
Weird, the HTTPS Anywhere chrome extensions seems to be redirecting me to status-page-blog.herokuapp.com
sandworm101 11y ago
1650:1? What's Microsoft's ratio? MS claims "1.5 billion people use Windows every day." 1500000000 / 1650 = 909091 Does MS have 900,000 call center people? I'm betting not. It may an apples and oranges comparison (app v. OS) but 1650:1 remains nothing special in the world of customer support. I would much rather then brag about how quickly customer concerns are dealt with or how few are routed to voicemail.
- anhedonisticguy 11y ago
  I think you'd have to include a large majority of IT personnel in this figure, as they are the likely first line of support for many windows installs. That number is probably much higher than 1 million. Apples to oranges, of course. The interesting part is that MS scaled their support to include people paid by their customers directly because their software was so business critical.
  - odonnellryan 11y ago
    Even high-tier MS support isn't great. You may rely on it and `need` the support, but you don't really need it.
    - nostalgiac 11y ago
      What? I'm guessing you've never actually paid for an MS Support Call? They will work through your issue no matter what until a resolution is reached.
      - odonnellryan 11y ago
        I'm sure I don't have experience with every tier of their support, but I've dealt with both Microsoft Partner support and paid support contracts for both Windows Server and SQL Server. They will definitely help you, eventually, and the problem will eventually get fixed. However, eventually (in my experience) has been usually several days.
- superuser2 11y ago
FajitaNachos 11y ago
Their call to action signup is pretty slick. Full page on page load, then no longer accessible once you scroll down or refresh. First time I've seen something like that in the wild.

91 points by duaneb 11y ago

acconrad 11y ago

I'd be asking for a raise if I were that rep.

stevenklein 11y ago
+1
- alexivanovs 11y ago
  +2 = 3
pbreit 11y ago
Well, if I'm reading the chart correctly, it's about 15 emails/day. Maybe not raise-worthy?
jo909 11y ago
They rotate support duty, every engineer and even the founders do it for a week each.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  This is the most important part of the email! I almost got fired once for very modestly bringing up the idea at a previous role ;)

itsdevlin 11y ago

This doesn't seem unreasonable. As a data point, we're just shy of 10k customers with one full-time support person (and two part-time). In my experience, it was the process of setting up the KB and process by which you'd answer tickets that was the most arduous. 0-10 users, easy. 10->100 OMFG EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE. 100->n becomes just an optimization problem.

gscott 11y ago

I ran a groupware platform that had over 1,000 daily users on it myself with about 30 new organizations signing up to use it every day. The key thing was to create help videos and help hover icons everywhere possible. Eventually it was self-supporting no one ever had questions because the answers were all right there.

huhtenberg 11y ago

Whether or not this number is notable depends squarely on the nature of the product/service. One-man shareware shops routinely have tens of thousands customers and handle all of the support in addition to doing everything else. And hardly anyone ever brags about this.

odonnellryan 11y ago
I worked for several years as corporate IT support back in the day. Each employee represented around 2K user's nation wide. It was very busy and we didn't do a good job (understaffed) but we did everything. Supported ALL the applications. All hard ware. PC upgrades. You name it. You handled your 50 calls a day. It sucked, that's why we all left, but 2K+ for one person for one application stack... not that crazy.
ytpete 11y ago
And that's true in open-source too. For example the Brackets code editor project (which I work on sometimes) has over 250,000 users, yet there's only about a dozen people who regularly respond to bug reports, IRC, forum questions, etc. -- half of whom are volunteers. That's a much higher ratio than 1,650:1...

myohan 11y ago

I think the challenge is not in the numbers but in the quality of support and these guys are doing it well and substantiating how they did it with solid evidence.

philip1209 11y ago

Weird, the HTTPS Anywhere chrome extensions seems to be redirecting me to status-page-blog.herokuapp.com

sandworm101 11y ago

1650:1? What's Microsoft's ratio? MS claims "1.5 billion people use Windows every day." 1500000000 / 1650 = 909091 Does MS have 900,000 call center people? I'm betting not. It may an apples and oranges comparison (app v. OS) but 1650:1 remains nothing special in the world of customer support. I would much rather then brag about how quickly customer concerns are dealt with or how few are routed to voicemail.

anhedonisticguy 11y ago
I think you'd have to include a large majority of IT personnel in this figure, as they are the likely first line of support for many windows installs. That number is probably much higher than 1 million. Apples to oranges, of course. The interesting part is that MS scaled their support to include people paid by their customers directly because their software was so business critical.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  Even high-tier MS support isn't great. You may rely on it and `need` the support, but you don't really need it.
  - nostalgiac 11y ago
    What? I'm guessing you've never actually paid for an MS Support Call? They will work through your issue no matter what until a resolution is reached.
    - odonnellryan 11y ago
      I'm sure I don't have experience with every tier of their support, but I've dealt with both Microsoft Partner support and paid support contracts for both Windows Server and SQL Server. They will definitely help you, eventually, and the problem will eventually get fixed. However, eventually (in my experience) has been usually several days.
superuser2 11y ago

FajitaNachos 11y ago

Their call to action signup is pretty slick. Full page on page load, then no longer accessible once you scroll down or refresh. First time I've seen something like that in the wild.