Starting Up | HelpDocs Blog

Hire Vans and Sports Cars: The Two-Way Street of Customer Service

From the death of a loved one to losing your job, it’s fair to say Matt only wanted one of the “five most stressful life events” to happen this year. 🙈

Starting Up

How Service Saved our House Buying Dream

Somewhere between sizing up kitchen worktops and the slow queue for mid-shop IKEA meatballs, it dawned on me: We’re buying a house. Wait, let me correct that. We’ve

Starting Up

Communicating through Emoji

If I’ve learned one thing during the 8 months I’ve spent following HelpDocs, it’s that this company is truly unique. The people here are even more so.

Starting Up

Emerging From our Hiring Failures

Last time we tried to hire was a 💩show. So when Jake told me we were hiring again, I had two contradictory and gut-wrenching reactions: Excited relief, and overwhelming fear.

Remote Insights

HelpDocs Has Ruined Marketing for Me, and Here's Why I'm Grateful!

“If you ever need a marketing gig in the future you’re pretty fucked”, Jake remarked during a completely off-topic bout of lighthearted banter about work ethics. We often joke

Remote Insights

A Rose by any Other Name

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to chat with our customers and friends at Referral Rock, about all things referral marketing, customer success, and putting people first. It

Starting Up

Customer-Centric Service isn't a Growth Hack

It was a rainy Sunday. My wife and I had spent the morning lazing in bed reading as the rain bucketed down outside. After a few hours of pleading puppy

Starting Up

Size isn’t Always Indicative of Size

We had a short debrief on Slack before Jake and Jarratt disappeared into the night, retreating back to their much-earned glasses of wine. I, on the other hand, got thinking

Starting Up

Taking Responsibility for Other's Faults

Yesterday, I experienced my first moment of pure dread since joining the HelpDocs team. The stupid thing is, in hindsight, it wasn’t even that big a deal. It was

SaaS Insights

Why ROI Isn’t Ingrained in Our DNA

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling with measuring the ROI of my work. And it wasn’t until I brought it up with the rest of the

Starting Up

Hustling Hard for Happiness

49% of all working days lost in 2016-2017 were due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety. Let’s take a moment to think about that for a second. Work is

Starting Up

What I Learned from Failing at Co-working

A couple of years ago, I took my first stab at co-working. I was a freelancer at the time, exploring new ways to build out a small network of contacts.

Starting Up

Don't Preach to Teach If You Intend to Sell

I was reading a blog post earlier from a moderately well known social media company. The post, whilst framed as educational, was almost entirely dedicated to pedaling their wares and

Starting Up

Hiring for Culture Fit and Hurting Hearts 💔

Who knew hiring as a small, bootstrapped team was so tough. A few months ago, we began our search for a Customer Success Manager. It was an entry-level position. The

Starting Up

The Crappy Art of Rejecting Writers

Rejection is my biggest weakness. Whether it’s me saying no, or me on the receiving end, I’m just not good at it, at all. I can take criticism.

Starting Up

When is a Startup no Longer a Startup?

When does a startup become a company? Is it a case of profitability? Team size? Revenue? It’s been on the front of my mind recently. Part of my job

Product Insights

Not the Hardest Admission to Make (a Clickbait-Free Story)

I have to admit something. HelpDocs is not the only software your support teams will ever need. And we have no plans to be. As a marketer, it feels a

Starting Up

Why We're Not Marketing Our Enterprise Knowledge Base Software

When I first joined HelpDocs a few months ago, my experience with support docs, and enterprise knowledge base software was pretty limited. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been

Starting Up

Breaking the Bad Habit of Breaking Habits

Around 18 months ago, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and it made me feel sick. A couple of years before, I'd quit a 14-year smoking habit,

Starting Up

Living up to Your Own Definition of Success

When I took the leap to go freelance, one of my first roles was helping flesh out the blog of a branding agency. The company I was working with, Motto,

Remote Insights

Delusions of Culture: Making Remote Work as a Small Team

Since working at HelpDocs the past few months, I’ve become a pro at explaining what remote work is and how it works. So much so, I’m thinking of adding it to my CV under “additional skills”.

Starting Up

Lessons From Carving Productively

A couple of years ago, I first wrote about venturing into the splintery world of woodcraft. I had no idea it would turn into an ongoing obsession. I had even

Starting Up

Organizing Our First Company Retreat as a Bootstrapped Remote Startup

For us the benefits of being a remote company are obvious. You can work when and where you’re most comfortable, you’re able to travel or spend time with

Starting Up

How Being Rejected By Multiple Startup Accelerators Actually Helped Us

If you're anything like we are as startup founders, you'll have considered joining an accelerator program. At least once. I mean, it seems like a great deal, right? You get

Starting Up

How We Gained 2 Hours a Day by Experimenting With a New Startup Work Schedule

Getting in the zone with work has always been tough for us. Like many other startup founders, getting the most out of each day is crucial. It’s not about