Support Smarter - The HelpDocs Blog

Why We Don't Assume Pronouns in Customer Support

Gendering customers is something many customer support teams do without thinking. Is it time we change our behavior?

Getting Video to Work in our Knowledge Base

Creating videos for a knowledge base is a unique challenge. Here's how I learnt to make them without professional experience.

Stories

Value in Planning and Positivity

Creating courses ain’t easy. I guess nobody said they would be. But I didn't think they'd be this tough! It’s fair to say over the past few months

Stories

Flying High with Thai

There’s something about traveling that makes me uneasy. I guess it’s kind of ironic for a remote worker. Someone who could literally work from anywhere with a halfway

Remote work

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

Remote work

Is AI ruining the customer experience?

I’ve been seething for days. It’s made writing this post incredibly difficult as I’ve had to sift through the countless curse words to settle on the most accurate to convey my current state of mind.

Remote Insights

Managing the Imposter Within

When you try to do everything, you risk achieving nothing. That's what I've learned from decades of struggling with imposter syndrome.

Remote Insights

My Struggles with Time Management, Education and Support

It takes 23 minutes to recover from an interruption. As I struggled with a sidestep into education, this stat proved to be way more true than I ever thought possible!

Remote Insights

When Customer Happiness is Never a Priority, Does it Ever Become One?

For a while, I’ve been trying to reconcile the idea that many huge companies purposefully avoid placing any effort on their customer service. And worse still, that we, as consumers, kind of let them. We fail to hold them accountable or really call them out on it.

Support Smarter

What Can Go Wrong Doesn’t Always Go Wrong

The journey back from the HelpDocs retreat in Panama was always going to be long. In fact, despite being around 4 hours shorter, it felt infinitely longer than the outgoing

Support Smarter

My Ever Changing Expectations of Service Levels

It’s 30 celsius outside. In fact, it might be more but I’m too comfortable working from the air-conned executive lounge to step out into the bustling boulevard of

Support Smarter

The Truth Is You Might Not Need a Knowledge Base

Over the past few weeks, I’d been preparing myself for my first ever webinar, in partnership with our friends at Gorgias. Sid from Gorgias came up with the idea

Support Smarter

Filtering my Negativity as a Crappy Customer

It turns out, I’m a crappy customer. Not to open with a blog post cliché, but honestly, this really is a tough one to admit. 'Cause nobody wants to

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

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

Customer Stories

Star Wars Robots and Educating the Future Innovators—In Discussion with Sphero's Sara Sampson

Like most nerdy movie buffs and tech lovers, I’m a big fan of Sphero, the masterminds behind that BB-8 Star Wars robot. They are—in my humble and totally

Product Insights

HelpDocs 💖 Front

Before I joined HelpDocs, I was a freelancer. I worked within a few teams, but was rarely on the inner circle or anywhere near support, so had very little use

SaaS Insights

The Painful Experience of Breaking up with Customers

Breaking up with customers sucks. It’s like any relationship. You’ve both poured everything you can into making it work, but despite all your best efforts something just doesn’

Support Smarter

Remembering My Golden Ticket Support Experience

A few days ago, the creative geniuses at Geckoboard shared a glorious poster with a bunch of comical characters, affectionately referred to as "The Tickets". There are nine

Support Smarter

What Hotels Have Taught Me About Customer Support

When we started building HelpDocs, I had a lot of assumptions about customer support. I believed the loudest, angriest customers got all the rewards. I thought doing small favours for

Support Smarter

Strategies to Navigate Confused Customers Towards Your Knowledge Base

Releasing a knowledge base to your customers is like a cruise ship on its maiden voyage. Building a ship takes a lot of effort and resources. But if nobody ever

Support Smarter

Simple Steps to Make Sure First Time Users Have a Great Experience

Landing in a new destination is always a little daunting. How should I get to my hotel? Do I need cash? How should I greet someone? Luckily signs and interactive

Support Smarter

Introducing Our First Guide: Building a Knowledge Base from Scratch

It’s easy to leave setting up a knowledge base at the bottom of your to-do list. Or y’know, assign that one to another teammate. No biggie. 🤨 Like an

Support Smarter

Rebuilding a Knowledge Base for a High Growth Startup

When I started my job at Drift, I was there for many different reasons: To learn everything I could about our product, to disperse that knowledge internally and externally, and

Knowledge Bases

How Self-Service Knowledge Bases Empower Support Staff to Get More Done

“The customer is always right”. Yeah, and they’re super demanding too. According to Harvard Business Review, 65% of customers want their problem resolved in the first try. And, over