tl;dr: Don't. 🙅‍♂️ If I had to make a list of things I hate when contacting customer support, deceiving answers would be close to the top. Recently I had the unfortunate privilege of receiving one. I'd like to tap into that experience and see if there&

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 bought a house. I still can’t quite believe it. 3 months ago, my wife and I’d already written

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.

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!

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.

Comparisons should be great for customers to find the right fit, but the truth is they don't work. Let me tell you why...

January is an inexplicably long month. 🕰 Perhaps it’s a kind of repercussion from taking a longer break over the “holiday period”, coupled with the long nights and cold, overcast days. Or maybe it’s just some psychobabble illusion that we’ve all bought into. Who knows! 🤷🏻‍♂️ For me, January&

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to chat with our customers and friends at Referral Rock [https://referralrock.com/], about all things referral marketing, customer success, and putting people first [https://blog.helpdocs.io/referrals-culture-and-putting-people-first/]. It was enlightening, and while I’m a little awkward and massively introverted,

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 find out. I’m sure it would look like it’s 30 degrees as I peer down

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 around scaling support during the holidays without hiring, and I agreed to deliver a part about creating

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, in fact, a bit of a douche canoe. You see, I am naturally quite a cynical

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 eventually gave in to the demands of our 3-year-old cocker spaniel and took him to the local

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 know, because that’s what it says on Slack. Jake and Jarratt had signed off for the

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 inbox. Despite that being the case, when Front was merely a beta waiting to be released like

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 anymore. Maybe it’s you, or maybe it’s them. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

A few days ago, the creative geniuses at Geckoboard shared a glorious poster with a bunch of comical characters [https://www.geckoboard.com/the-tickets/], affectionately referred to as "The Tickets". There are nine tickets in total, each representing a type of support request that many working in customer

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 recipe for disaster. And, like most, I grew up with the idea "the customer is always

The customer is always right, or so we're told. For decades this idea has underpinned customer satisfaction for businesses around the world. "Le client n'a jamais tort", chant the French. "Der Kunde ist König", shout the Germans. But no matter the country

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’s been a drain with no reward. You've spent hours organizing, writing, and publishing articles.

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 in the right direction, and when they fail there’s always someone there to help out. Take

As a customer it can often feel like the person on the other end of the line or more appropriate these days—messenger, doesn’t have your best interests at heart. No matter if you’re a good fit for their product or not, you’re going in their funnel

When I started my job at Drift [https://drift.com], 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 tone for the rest of the customer advocates to come after me. We were

Leads and customers land on your knowledge base to find answers. They actively want to become successful with your product. And the reason you write them at all is to guide them to get there, right? My top tip when starting with a knowledge base is to write everything down.

Apple, Coca Cola, and Nike are just a few examples of consumer brands who have managed to stay relevant over time, in no small part due to strong product management. High-tech product management, on the other hand, is considered by some to be a young and relatively immature profession. But