17 ms·

Ask HN: What SaaS customer service tools does your startup use?

• bculper 10y ago
  None. Reason: Capacity and focus on product. Are we doing it wrong?
  • andor 10y ago
    Do you have a feedback channel? How do you know your product is on track to meet customer needs?
    • bculper 10y ago
      We do have a "Beta feedback" process for all users (which is essentially a one-way communication for now) which allows us to gather their input. In addition to our Pirate analytics, we also use Mouseflow to observe user behavior. So we are gathering data both directly from users (although we could probably improve the beta feedback process) and from analytics, we just don't have a lot of extra time since we have other jobs at the moment.
  • leesalminen 10y ago
    Depends on the product. We sell our software to business owners who use it to manage the majority of their day to day operations. A well thought out support system was needed on day 1.
• freyfogle 10y ago
  We have started doing blog posts reviewing the various SaaS services we use: http://blog.opencagedata.com/tagged/toolsweuse http://blog.opencagedata.com/tagged/toolsweuse so far we've covered * Baremetrics * Quaderno coming soon: * Statsbot * Hosted Graphite * StatusCake * TravisCI * Drip * TransferWise (not a SaaS service, but saves us a ton of money)
  • Faaak 10y ago
    Is there really much to say about StatusCake ? I use it and I have to say that it seems too much simple (not enough alert terms, hasn't got hooks, too expensive)..
    • djdclarke 10y ago
      StatusCake does support web hooks, along with 10 other integrations including fully supporting advance alert routing. We also have all the features of major monitoring services as well as virus scanning, domain monitoring, SSL certificate monitoring and so many other features. I mean, we also have a free plan that gives you monitoring (and hooks) along with a wide range of features for an unlimited amount of sites! Kind Regards, Daniel.
• nikentic 10y ago
  Groove (https://www.groovehq.com/ https://www.groovehq.com/) only. We're super happy with it!
  • graystevens 10y ago
    Groove is who I went with, after looking into this area. Very happy with it so far, the on-boarding was perfect with its step by step setup. Would certainly recommend.
    • thebitmonk 10y ago
      We have used Groove and really liked the simplicity of the software. However as use cases matured we realised that doing SEO on the knowledge base articles is not possible.
  • scosman 10y ago
    We switched to Groove from Zendesk (which was awful). We're happy with it. I do wish it had better reporting. It also has occasional hiccups (missing emails, report numbers inconsistent). Helpscout looks promising.
    • scosman 10y ago
      oops. We migrated from Desk.com, not Zendesk and it's too late to edit this comment. Zendesk could be an amazing product.
  • coleca 10y ago
    We use Groove also. It works fine but we do wish it had any kind of mobile support. Even if the desktop site would just function in a mobile browser would be helpful. Two way Slack integration would be a dream (it has notification only now. You can't respond to tickets from slack).
    • bitmedley 10y ago
      it looks like Groove will be releasing a mobile app any day now (expected release early March 2017). https://help.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/does-groove-have-a-mobile-app https://help.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/does-groove-...
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• drusepth 10y ago
  None at Notebook.ai other than being active and responsive on social media and linking various Google Forms on-site for reporting bugs, requesting features, etc. Follow-up on those is by email. Since we're open source, we also invite anyone to create issues on GitHub as well, though it's usually the more technical crowd that do so. Reasoning: 1) it's free, 2) quality customer service is free advertising when it's public, and 3) there's less friction to "get in touch" with us (and follow up quickly) when it's on a platform a user is already using. Would definitely love to hear about a (free) quality customer service tool if there are any out there, though. I think we're starting to outgrow Forms/email, as some way to aggregate common requests together (without manually building a spreadsheet, like now) and sort/filter/rank them would be beneficial.
• fgl_luke 10y ago
  Olark really helped us with our customer service, we use both the live chat feature, and the 'email us' feature for when nobody is available on live chat. We expected it would help us to respond to support requests better - which it did, but it also offered some advantages that we didn't expect: - Users are way more likely to reach out in the first place due to the easy live chat/email widget on each page - In some cases we have actually been able to use the data from Olark to determine the quality of our traffic and landing page (e.g. users are not understanding our message, or we are getting a lot of queries about something unrelated to our product [targeting issue])
  • giarc 10y ago
    We have just implemented Olark as well. We had a problem where a ton of our new users were signing up for our product and then radio silence. Wouldn't log in again, wouldn't respond to personal emails from myself. We implemented Olark to hopefully catch those people when they are signing up and get them engaged. It hasn't been long enough to tell if it's working or not, but we're hoping.
• yalooze 10y ago
  HelpScout (https://www.helpscout.net/ https://www.helpscout.net/). Brilliant piece of software built by a bunch of people that really care. Regular new features and improvements, an intelligent help desk that just gets out of the way, and docs for customer self-service (they have a private option for docs which we use for internal knowledgebases too)
  • anarchitect 10y ago
    We're not a startup, but we've had great success with Helpscout too. Our customer service team absolutely love it, to the point where it's difficult to convince them that Intercom is worth trying!
  • michaelbuckbee 10y ago
    Helpscout is awesome. We use their API to put a "Summon Help" button in the footer of our app and auto generate help tickets that are pre-populated with all of contextual information that we need to then quickly solve the customer issues.
  • polysaturate 10y ago
    Yes, I can't approve of HelpScout enough, used them on the very generous fee tier. Was easy to use and the web app is pretty damn snappy.
  • dmode 10y ago
    How does HelpScout compare with Zendesk ?
  • johns 10y ago
    Another endorsement for HelpScout. Web app is great. iOS lacks features in a way that drives me crazy every day (team is well aware of them) but I still think it's the best available with fair pricing.
  • josscrowcroft 10y ago
    I think we've been with HelpScout for around 4 years at https://openexchangerates.org https://openexchangerates.org. The service is great, and they just seem like a really honest, switched-on team.
• manoj_venkat92 10y ago
  Freshdesk at Gozoomo.
• colinbartlett 10y ago
  StatusGator uses Freshdesk on the free plan and it's adequate for our needs. Freshdesk has worked flawlessly and beautifully handles triaging a few support requests and product feature suggestions every day. (Aside from a hiccup where I misconfigured notifications and inadvertently ignored dozens of tickets for a month... a PEBKAC issue.)
  • crikli 10y ago
    +1 for Freshdesk. Came over from Zendesk and at the time at least it was (much) lower cost and worked better for our small biz. Great API as well with good docs.
• jbrooksuk 10y ago
  Cachet and StyleCI use Helpscout. We've had no real qualms with it.
• nwenzel 10y ago
  Front + Intercom which gives us an email-based help desk, in-app chat and messaging, and a self-service FAQ help desk.
  • niel 10y ago
    Front + Intercom is the same combination we use. We're happy with Front's Intercom integration. We're still using Zendesk for Help Centre, but considering alternatives. Last time I checked, Intercom's help centre product was still lacking some features we needed, unfortunately. I think a big opportunity for Front is to make it easier to source content from different knowledge base systems (like Zendesk) to include snippets/links in emails without leaving Front. Perhaps a search box that inserts linked titles for Help Centre articles.
• palmeida 10y ago
  At viurdata.com we use Live Chat https://www.livechatinc.com/ https://www.livechatinc.com/ Good piece of software and we also take advantage of their ticket system
• mnort9 10y ago
  Drift https://www.drift.com https://www.drift.com
• minhajuddin 10y ago
  https://liveformhq.com/ https://liveformhq.com/ uses Mixpanel for tracking behavior to improve our product. We also used Zendesk for a while.
• ezekg 10y ago
  Drift has worked pretty well for me so far. Use Zendesk for another product and I'm not a big fan.
  • LogicX 10y ago
    Second on http://Drift.com http://Drift.com. Pleasantly surprised how many great conversations it drives for us at https://DNSFilter.com https://DNSFilter.com
  • creichert 10y ago
    Drift is a great tool. Simple and effective way to get started w/ direct support.
  • chrisked 10y ago
    Currently playing with drift. The app left a very good impression. Wanted to check intercom too, but their pricing confuses me :)
• philippnagel 10y ago
  Zendesk. We are thinking about switching to something else (currently looking at Freshdesk) as the service is getting disproportionally expensive with many users.
  • deedubaya 10y ago
    Intercom is where it's at.
  • scosman 10y ago
    [EDIT] I intended to make this comment about Desk.com, not Zendesk. Sorry! I can't speak to Zendesk, it might be amazing. [Original comment] Exporting your data when you leave is almost impossible. You'll need to keep paying even after you leave to keep your ticket history. I'd suggest moving sooner rather than later.
    • leesalminen 10y ago
      I came across this[0] yesterday on HN. Apparently they can migrate ticket history, knowledge base, etc between Zendesk and Freshdesk. [0] https://www.help-desk-migration.com https://www.help-desk-migration.com
• bcarroll22 10y ago
  We just finished building our own customer support tool to save some money (we're a bootstrapped startup). We wanted live chat for customers that went straight to our Slack, since we already use it for so much. We couldn't find anything else that worked the way we wanted, so we built it.
  • yesimahuman 10y ago
    This is such a startup thing to do :) Sounds like you might have another product pivot on your hands, would love to see what you've built! We've been dreaming of a slack + support integration that is more than just a stream of events.
    • bcarroll22 10y ago
      We're planning on extracting it in the near future so others can use it. Will definitely be posting it as a ShowHN when it's ready!
    • et5000 10y ago
      You could actually be living in a dream with Drift. https://www.drift.com/slack/ https://www.drift.com/slack/
  • giarc 10y ago
    That's very interesting. We use Slack a ton and just recently started on the Olark free plan (22 chats/month). I would love for chats to go to a separate slack channel instead of having to keep another tab open. Not to mention Olark doesn't have mobile support.
    • bcarroll22 10y ago
      We keep track of ticketing, so whenever a customer has a support question, it opens a new Slack channel as a "ticket", and invites the people you want added to support conversations.
    • johne20 10y ago
• janlukacs 10y ago
  Intercom for in-app chat and email messaging.
• leesalminen 10y ago
  Gingr (gingrapp.com) uses Freshdesk for ticketing, live chat, and knowledge base. Recently hit ticket #20000 and we are very happy with it.
• bbtorchia 10y ago
  We've used Desk.com for the past 2 or so years. For the most part, it has met our needs. We built 3 separate knowledge bases for 3 separate products, used macros to speed up answering common questions, and integrated third party phone and chat apps so we can keep records all in one place. That being said, we're probably going to be switching away. A few reasons here. First, it seems like we encounter bugs, crashes, and more serious service-level disruptions too often. Second, it is pretty expensive compared to other products out there. We came to Desk.com when we were really small. Our CTO was still the only dev we had so we were looking for an out of the box solution that could be customized by someone who was relatively non-technical. Desk can pretty much handle a lot of this customization but what results is something a bit clunky to use. This is not a criticism of Desk itself, more just an observation about tools that promise customization without dev resources. Anyway, I think we'll switch to HelpScout. I like that HelpScout defaults to sending plain-text emails, where Desk emails look like they come from someone using support desk software. Plus, they have all of the essential features we're looking for at a better price. Plus, I love HelpScout's content. I'm sure their marketers will love hearing this, but all their blog posts and resources give me the impression that they are a thoughtful company that understands customer support. It's always surprising to see how many customer support tools offer horrible customer support themselves. From my experience, that disconnect does not bode well for their product.
• rushabh 10y ago
  We build all our tools from customer support, CRM, billing, payroll to accounting -> https://erpnext.com https://erpnext.com. Its also open source, and would love more startups to use it. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext https://github.com/frappe/erpnext The benefit of open sources is that you can build deep integration to your processes and also grow it as your company grows. With closed tools, you will end up paying a lot and also lose the opportunity to drive more team productivity by being unable hack and extend your tools.
• donmatito 10y ago
  Self-plug alert. At Smooz we use... Smooz (https://www.smooz.io https://www.smooz.io) to open 800+ shared Slack channels with each team who install the app in their Slack team. Obviously, not everyone answers, but these conversation provide 1) incredible insights into use case, unclear onboarding flow, etc 2) help convert prospects 3) help retain users
• coderholic 10y ago
  For https://ipinfo.io https://ipinfo.io I use: - helpscout - chartmougal - fastmail - github - Travis - hookfeed - AWS
• nutanc 10y ago
  Zendesk for email Intercom for chat And we dogfood getkookoo for phone support
• pelmenept 10y ago
  Shameless plug. We built a Voice of the Customer tool - https://insightstash.com https://insightstash.com Collect feedback from visitors directly on your site. Lots of features and customizations.
• arbesfeld 10y ago
  At LogRocket we use - Intercom for chat / email - Readme for docs - ...LogRocket for issue reproduction
• ajainy 10y ago
  For https://snapcx.io https://snapcx.io , I have been experimenting with freshdesk, zendesk and zoho too. In end, as we are simple startup, I decided to stick with - Straight email support - asciidoc generated html pages for documentation https://snapcx.io/docs - self hosted contact us form. (it sends email to support) - free zendesk chat. (as of today, it's one or two chat request, which sends email to support email) - As we are selling API subscription, I am hosting swagger based api explorer. (simple html page) - https://snapcx.io/addressValidationAPI My current gap is more intuitive documentation, which has search functionality and also in-built api explorer. I believe readme.io has both but no customer support features.
  • brilliantcode 10y ago
    love the minimal approach but your quoted text is elongating horizontally. I don't know why the default behavior is like this for quoted text.
  • iMuzz 10y ago
    Hi Ajainy! Engineer from ReadMe here. We do have a support forum that you can enable[0] for your users. Is that the kind of customer support you were talking about? If not, I'd be curious to know what you meant! >[0] https://readme.readme.io/docs/submit-a-question https://readme.readme.io/docs/submit-a-question
    • ajainy 10y ago
      I was talking about support ticket etc.
      • iMuzz 10y ago
        Ah I see, we also have Zendesk integration so you can add the Zendesk widget to your ReadMe site. > https://readme.readme.io/docs/zendesk https://readme.readme.io/docs/zendesk
• veesahni 10y ago
  Self-Plug. We use our own product (http://www.enchant.com http://www.enchant.com) to support our customers .. It covers email support, a knowledge base website, live chat widget for the marketing site (i.e. sales), and an in-app widget that offers both live chat and an embedded knowledge base. Try it out - it's faster than gmail :)
  • troydavis 10y ago
    I'm a very happy paying customer of Enchant. We tested Intercom (much broader scope than we wanted), Helpscout (among other things, no Markdown support), and a handful of other tools. Enchant does what we need, nothing we don't, and stays out of the way.
• sixpenrose16 10y ago
  At http://formbit.co http://formbit.co, I use UserDeck. It has Guides (knowledge base) and Mailboxes, which serves our purpose. I looked at some other mentioned in this thread, but this works well for me.
• jwho82 10y ago
  Using Tidio Chat. Seems okay so far. - http://tidiochat.com http://tidiochat.com Edit: Misread the question.
• uwed 10y ago
  We started using GrooveHQ about two months ago. So far really great as it's affordable, fast and simple. Before that we tried HelpScout, Zendesk, Freshdesk and another one and all of them seemed more complicated as they're more complex.
• edibleEnergy 10y ago
  Plug: we are in private beta with Feedback[1], the customer support version of BugReplay[2]. We integrate with Zendesk aside from our standard custom JavaScript integration. In short, it's a product for Web development teams to collect perfect no-hassle bug reports from their users with all the details (video, network traffic, js logs) required to analyze and reproduce a problem. [1]: https://www.bugreplay.com/feedback-by-bugreplay https://www.bugreplay.com/feedback-by-bugreplay [2]: https://www.bugreplay.com https://www.bugreplay.com
• verelo 10y ago
  This has been interesting to read and raises an interesting question: it appears lots of you are leaving Zendesk and now using something else... 1) We still Zendesk here, what inspired you to leave? 2) What do you like about where you landed?
  • BillFranklin 10y ago
    We moved to Zendesk from Intercom for support. We still use Intercom, but just for product outreach and triggered messages. We have two former Zendeskers on our team, which is part of the reason we made the switch. But also because Zendesk has things that Intercom doesn't/didn't have at the time, like a help desk. You can also customize Zendesk with integrations pretty easily, such as by adding widgets[1]. Building and maintaining a Zendesk widget is a great developer experience. [1] https://www.zendesk.com/embeddables/ https://www.zendesk.com/embeddables/
• screensquid 10y ago
  At ScreenSquid (https://screensquid.com https://screensquid.com), we're using: - Zoho Suite (CRM, Subscriptions, Books, Campaigns) - Loggly - Heroku - S3 - Mixpanel Free - New Relic - Compose.io - Mandrill
  • BillFranklin 10y ago
    How do you find Zoho? I didn't know they offered recurring billing.
    • screensquid 10y ago
      It's awesome how the CRM, support, billing, campaigns, and accounting software all works together. The price is great, because you're getting full featured apps for only $60/seat. However, the way you connect the services is kinda janky, and I find myself wishing for more modern features sometimes. There's also competing products within the same ecosystem (social, email campaigns, and now recurring billing). The support is great and it's been great to start. I can see us growing out of it but it's doing the job for now.
• chasers 10y ago
  For customer communication... at AuthorityLabs we're using: 1) Intercom for chat and notifications 2) PagePilot (pagepilot.io) for the knowledgebase 3) G Suite for support@ 4) Campaign Monitor for mass emails Note: PagePilot is a new project of ours. Looking for beta testers :)
• m_a_t_t_8_6 10y ago
  HelpSpot for HelpDesk https://helpspot.com/ https://helpspot.com/ Discourse for public discussion https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/ Both can be self-hosted or SaaS which provides some nice flexibility.
• nitai 10y ago
  Helpmonks (https://helpmonks.com https://helpmonks.com) is being used by a lot of startups. One of the main reasons is because the price is based on mailbox(es) and not on users.
• philippz 10y ago
  We're using our own service for customer feedback, crowdsourcing and also bug tracking: https://www.stomt.com/stomt https://www.stomt.com/stomt