Support Smarter - The HelpDocs Blog

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 journey—a result

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 Panama City and

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 of a webinar

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 accept they are,

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 dog eyes, we

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 4:02pm—I

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 unqualified opinion—one

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 for a collaborative

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’t fit together

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 tickets in total,

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 customers was a

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 gets onboard, it’

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 maps point you

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 author getting started

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 to set the

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 60% of customers

Support Smarter

Live Chat & Bots: Where Do They Fit In When Interacting With Customers?

Customer support has always been a bit of a necessary evil for companies. Nobody wants to spend money on support, but without support would you have any customers? I doubt it. With the

Support Smarter

6 Customer Support Experts Weigh In on How to Stop Your Help Center from Going Stale

If you're a startup, keeping up with product updates is exhausting. You're likely pushing new code each week, which means your product is changing every week. Keeping a knowledge base updated is pretty

Support Smarter

How Surprisingly Good Support Wins Us Customers

At HelpDocs we’re kinda great at customer support. If you’ve ever sent us a support request (or just a hello) you’ll have seen this yourself. Almost all our chats are

Support Smarter

Creating a Culture Where Everyone Does Support

At Front, we’re passionate about helping companies communicate better. Thousands of teams use Front’s shared inbox platform for customer support that feels friendly and personal, with the powerful features of a

Support Smarter

Moving Past the Ticket Number: Having Conversations with Customers

"Hello Jarratt", a faceless agent from Acme Corp Customer Support replied in an email thread. "Thank you for providing that information and for working with us through the troubleshooting process&

Knowledge Bases

Create Better Knowledge Base Articles by Using the Magic of GIFs

Customer support has evolved in recent times. People want to serve themselves, rather than fill out a form to get in touch. When was the last time you phoned a company to get