Support Smarter My Ever Changing Expectations of Service Levels Itâs 30 celsius outside. In fact, it might be more but Iâm too comfortable working from the air-conned executive lounge to step out into the bustling boulevard of Panama City and find out. Iâm sure it would look like itâs 30 degrees as I peer down
Support Smarter The Truth Is You Might Not Need a Knowledge Base Over the past few weeks, Iâd 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
Support Smarter Filtering my Negativity as a Crappy Customer It turns out, Iâm a crappy customer. Not to open with a blog post clichĂŠ, 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
Support Smarter 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 eventually gave in to the demands of our 3-year-old cocker spaniel and took him to the local
Support Smarter 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 wasnât even that big a deal. It was 4:02pmâI know, because thatâs what it says on Slack. Jake and Jarratt had signed off for the
Support Smarter HelpDocs đ 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 inbox. Despite that being the case, when Front was merely a beta waiting to be released like
Support Smarter The Painful Experience of Breaking up with Customers Breaking up with customers sucks. Itâs like any relationship. Youâve both poured everything you can into making it work, but despite all your best efforts something just doesnât fit together anymore. Maybe itâs you, or maybe itâs them. Maybe itâs a bit of both.
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 [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
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 recipe for disaster. And, like most, I grew up with the idea "the customer is always
Support Smarter How to Build Features Users Need by Ignoring What They Ask For 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 KĂśnig", shout the Germans. But no matter the country
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, itâs been a drain with no reward. You've spent hours organizing, writing, and publishing articles.
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 in the right direction, and when they fail thereâs always someone there to help out. Take
Support Smarter Why We Send Prospects to Competitors If We're Not a Good Fit As a customer it can often feel like the person on the other end of the line or more appropriate these daysâmessenger, doesnât have your best interests at heart. No matter if youâre a good fit for their product or not, youâre going in their funnel
Announcements Introducing Our First Guide: Building a Knowledge Base from Scratch Itâs easy to leave setting up a knowledge base at the bottom of your to-do list. Or yâknow, assign that one to another teammate. No biggie. 𤨠Like an author getting started on their next novel, writing and organizing a knowledge base can be a daunting, confusing task. Thinking
Support Smarter Rebuilding a Knowledge Base for a High Growth Startup 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
Support Smarter Making Walkthrough Videos for Help Documentation 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.
Support Smarter The Future of Product Management in 2018 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
Support Smarter How Self-Service Knowledge Bases Empower Support Staff to Get More Done âThe customer is always rightâ. Yeah, and theyâre super demanding too. According to Harvard Business Review [https://hbr.org/2010/07/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers], 65% of customers want their problem resolved in the first try. And, over 60% of customers believe that knowledgeable employees is crucial to providing good customer service.
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 rise of live chat, it's even harder for support reps to deliver good responses, in
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 much a marathon with the finishing line moving away from you every step.
Support Smarter Top-Notch Image Annotation Tools for Your Knowledge Base Articles Check out these tools to make your knowledge base more visually appealing.
Support Smarter Increase Customer Onboarding Engagement by Getting Out the Way It seems like customer onboarding is a never ending rabbit hole of options. It's difficult to tell what's working and what's not. There are so many things to tweak, the job's never over. Add a small copy change to your signup form
Support Smarter How to Write Knowledge Base Articles Customers Can Actually Understand Writing a knowledge base article is a surprisingly difficult task. How can you keep the language simple and clear? How do you get across the information without making your customers fall asleep? đ´ Good news is you don't need to take a class in technical writing. In fact, the
Support Smarter How Surprisingly Good Support Wins Us Customers At HelpDocs weâre kinda great at customer support. If youâve ever sent us a support request (or just a hello) youâll have seen this yourself. Almost all our chats are replied to within 30 waking minutes. Usually way quicker. Itâs safe to say our customers love
Support Smarter Creating a Culture Where Everyone Does Support At Front [https://frontapp.com/], weâre passionate about helping companies communicate better. Thousands of teams use Frontâs shared inbox platform for customer support that feels friendly and personal, with the powerful features of a help desk working behind the scenes. With Front powering great support teams around the