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

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

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.

“The customer is always right”. Yeah, and they’re 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

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

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.

Check out these tools to make your knowledge base more visually appealing.

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

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? 😴 Good news is you don't need to take a class in technical writing. In fact, the

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 replied to within 30 waking minutes. Usually way quicker. It’s safe to say our customers love

At Front [https://frontapp.com/], 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 help desk working behind the scenes. With Front powering great support teams around the

"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". Once again, there I was dealing with a large company and their inadequate customer support. Ticket

We've been putting off building an onboarding sequence for a little while now, mainly because we were worried it would be a gigantic time-sink. There are loads of ways to optimize onboarding email sequences and it can easily get out of hand. 🙁 What should we include to