Ask HN: What do startups use for customer support?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209174

by micah63 • 15 years ago

12 8 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Just curious what small startups (3-5 employees) use for customer support/bug tracking/CRM?

Jsarokin• 15 years ago

http://www.olark.com/

limebomb• 15 years ago

http://www.parature.com

Thomaschaaf• 15 years ago

We are currently building support software because we thought that the options did not fit our needs. We'd love to get some more beta testers. http://suplify.me

jeffepp• 15 years ago

http://snapengage.com (real time)

smackjer• 15 years ago

I've used http://www.zendesk.com before. Using http://tenderapp.com now and liking it.

hajrice• 15 years ago

I use Olark...but I like to think it's more of a sales tool. Then again, some of you will argue that support can be used as a sales process; I don't care how big/small of a company you run, customer service is probably the single most important factor (from a consumers standpoint) next to the product.

I've tried Zendesk and while they're great in parts like ticketing and assigning tasks to individual support members, I think they fail at recognizing at the bases of customer support. THERE IS NOTHING MORE THAT I HATE when I have to register twice. I already have an account at xyz.com, why do I have to create one to fill out a support request? It's very confusing, especially when they tune the design to be pretty similar.

LiveChat rocks, the guys at Olark are doing it really well..snapengage is pretty badass for that automatic messaging(sending a msg like: Hey, hwo are you liking the site? <-- typo put on purpose) can really start engagements as I don't really want to send the same message every time a new visitor comes to my site.

Btw, I'm building a support system which is targeted at sites which have customers, which is really meant to cut down support(VisaulWebsiteOptimizer is expecting to cut theirs down by more than 50%), and provide a natural interface(both for your startup and customers) which basically creates a powerful help page(and no, unlike zendesk, you dont have to rehire your designer to spend a week triming it to fit your company's brand). In case you're interested send me an email at hajrice@gmail.com and I'll make sure to include you in the private beta.

talbina• 15 years ago

http://www.assistly.com/

imagetic• 15 years ago

We built http://tenderapp.com to handle customer support on Lighthouse. Tender quickly became a product of it's own.

Ask HN: What do startups use for customer support?

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