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This is exactly what I thought when picking a customer support software last month. After hiring my first support person and being unable to decide between Inte

by _1tem 1y ago

This is exactly what I thought when picking a customer support software last month. After hiring my first support person and being unable to decide between Intercom/Front/HelpScout/Zendesk I finally just vibe coded my own helpdesk in a few days with the just the features I needed - perfectly integrated into my SaaS, and best of all, free.

cpursley 1y ago
I’d love to hear more about how this works. It’s whatever you built, integrated with your email stack? Because I’m super sassed out.
- _1tem 1y ago
  Yes it's just a wrapper on top of Gmail with Inbox Zero philosophy (each email is a support ticket). I only needed 3 features for my helpdesk: 1. an AI email drafter which used my product docs and email templates as context (eventually I plan to add "tools" where the AI can lookup info in our database) 2. a simple email client with a sidebar with customer contextual info (their billing plan, etc.) and a few simple buttons for the operator to take actions on their account 3. A few basic team collaboration features, notes, assigning tickets to operators, escalating tickets... It took about 2 days to build the initial version, and about 2 weeks to iron out a number of annoying AI slop bugs in the beginning. But after a month of use it's now pretty stable, my customer support hire is using it and she's happy.
  - cpursley 1y ago
    Very cool, thanks. Somewhat related I vibed up a simple docs/support chat bot that uses the markdown files for an astro starlight docs (all of these similar chat bot tools are like $50 a month): https://star-support-demo.vercel.app/en/getting-started https://star-support-demo.vercel.app/en/getting-started repo: https://github.com/agoodway/star-support-demo https://github.com/agoodway/star-support-demo
bravesoul2 1y ago
Doesn't the vibe coded solution just mean you need to spend time maintaining that code that isn't your core business? Unless a bespoke customer support is crucial to it?
- _1tem 1y ago
  Yes, but the cost of building and maintaining code has gone down so fast that it might actually be worth it. Plus, we get bespoke features that we would never get otherwise. And you have to spend developer time maintaining a good integration with an external product anyway.
  - forsakenharmony 1y ago
    The cost of maintaining code has absolutely not gone down and every line of code is tech debt The big issue with AI coding is that is kills the fun part of software development (actually writing code) and just becomes reviewing and understanding code you didn't write
    - ramraj07 1y ago
      Keep your manual Porsche for weekend drives. Get a adaptive cruise lane assist camry for real work. Every line of code is tech debt, true. Every integration is orders of magnitude more tech debt. The only time an integration wasn't tech debt was when I set up new relic logging.
    - amrangaye 1y ago
      “Kills the fun part of coding” - absolutely not! Coding is a lot more fun now that I can move from idea to working prototype in an evening without having to figure out individual libraries, research and learn them etc. The last time I felt this excited / into tech was when I first discovered Ruby on Rails and started using it for projects. I’ve done several projects that would take months to complete otherwise with “vibes coding”, including: an African fairy tale generator for my daughter, a farm management system for the ministry of agriculture in my country, a Gambian political comic strip creator, a system that generates ten minutes summary podcasts of all my country’s news etc. I’ve also had great success with clients - and got them to sign on much faster - by just putting together a quick demo now that I show them instead of sending a proposal and pitch deck describing what I’ll build for them. It makes them so much more excited and we can make changes almost in realtime. I’ve noticed a lot in the industry and even on hn, that coders - especially long time ones - tend to “look down” on vibes coding, the same way they did with scripted languages back in the day, and I imagine the same way with compilers. I think this will generally fade out as it becomes industry standard, but in the meantime sometimes I see comments on hn that are so discouraging and cynical it makes me wonder if the person actually tried it out or had just pre judged it. I also think the phrase “vibe coding” is a terrible name, cause it makes it sound like a lazy way of doing things. It’s so much more than that, and lets you think and plan at the idea level. Things like planning your system before you ask it to implement also help a lot.

by _1tem 1y ago

cpursley 1y ago

I’d love to hear more about how this works. It’s whatever you built, integrated with your email stack? Because I’m super sassed out.

_1tem 1y ago
Yes it's just a wrapper on top of Gmail with Inbox Zero philosophy (each email is a support ticket). I only needed 3 features for my helpdesk: 1. an AI email drafter which used my product docs and email templates as context (eventually I plan to add "tools" where the AI can lookup info in our database) 2. a simple email client with a sidebar with customer contextual info (their billing plan, etc.) and a few simple buttons for the operator to take actions on their account 3. A few basic team collaboration features, notes, assigning tickets to operators, escalating tickets... It took about 2 days to build the initial version, and about 2 weeks to iron out a number of annoying AI slop bugs in the beginning. But after a month of use it's now pretty stable, my customer support hire is using it and she's happy.
- cpursley 1y ago
  Very cool, thanks. Somewhat related I vibed up a simple docs/support chat bot that uses the markdown files for an astro starlight docs (all of these similar chat bot tools are like $50 a month): https://star-support-demo.vercel.app/en/getting-started https://star-support-demo.vercel.app/en/getting-started repo: https://github.com/agoodway/star-support-demo https://github.com/agoodway/star-support-demo

bravesoul2 1y ago

Doesn't the vibe coded solution just mean you need to spend time maintaining that code that isn't your core business? Unless a bespoke customer support is crucial to it?

_1tem 1y ago
Yes, but the cost of building and maintaining code has gone down so fast that it might actually be worth it. Plus, we get bespoke features that we would never get otherwise. And you have to spend developer time maintaining a good integration with an external product anyway.
- forsakenharmony 1y ago
  The cost of maintaining code has absolutely not gone down and every line of code is tech debt The big issue with AI coding is that is kills the fun part of software development (actually writing code) and just becomes reviewing and understanding code you didn't write
  - ramraj07 1y ago
    Keep your manual Porsche for weekend drives. Get a adaptive cruise lane assist camry for real work. Every line of code is tech debt, true. Every integration is orders of magnitude more tech debt. The only time an integration wasn't tech debt was when I set up new relic logging.
  - amrangaye 1y ago
    “Kills the fun part of coding” - absolutely not! Coding is a lot more fun now that I can move from idea to working prototype in an evening without having to figure out individual libraries, research and learn them etc. The last time I felt this excited / into tech was when I first discovered Ruby on Rails and started using it for projects. I’ve done several projects that would take months to complete otherwise with “vibes coding”, including: an African fairy tale generator for my daughter, a farm management system for the ministry of agriculture in my country, a Gambian political comic strip creator, a system that generates ten minutes summary podcasts of all my country’s news etc. I’ve also had great success with clients - and got them to sign on much faster - by just putting together a quick demo now that I show them instead of sending a proposal and pitch deck describing what I’ll build for them. It makes them so much more excited and we can make changes almost in realtime. I’ve noticed a lot in the industry and even on hn, that coders - especially long time ones - tend to “look down” on vibes coding, the same way they did with scripted languages back in the day, and I imagine the same way with compilers. I think this will generally fade out as it becomes industry standard, but in the meantime sometimes I see comments on hn that are so discouraging and cynical it makes me wonder if the person actually tried it out or had just pre judged it. I also think the phrase “vibe coding” is a terrible name, cause it makes it sound like a lazy way of doing things. It’s so much more than that, and lets you think and plan at the idea level. Things like planning your system before you ask it to implement also help a lot.