Show HN: We built a better solution for customer analysis and support

http://lessneglect.com/customer-analytics

by corywatilo • 14 years ago

45 34 14 years ago

I built and iOS library for this last night (i'll open-source it soon). I love this idea and for iOS apps that don't have a web backend, this is a great and easy way to implement CRM with your app user info.

We use TestFlight a lot in our iOS apps. TestFlight is great for tracking what your users are doing inside your app, and logging errors. LessNeglect goes a step further and lets you tie users and actions together with an open communication channel.

I'm going to use this specifically to allow users of my iOS apps to send me support requests, and to also track in-app purchases.

thegooley6• 14 years ago

Awesome! Can't wait to see it, and let me know if I can help out on the API side at all.

sikakkar• 14 years ago

It'd be awesome to see use iOS library! This idea is really cool and I'd love to use this for my app.

chromedude• 14 years ago

Would absolutely love to hear when you open source it! I was actually highly considering one until I saw your comment.

d0m• 14 years ago

It took me a while to figure out what lessneglect was really about.. I.e. I feel the messaging on the front page is the kind of "Use us, we'll save you thousand of dollar".. yes, but how exactly?

After looking at the screenshots, I had a better idea. From my understanding, it's a feed of the actions happening on your website. So, rather than having a "Facebook feed of latest news from your friends", you have a "Feed of latest actions on your website".

Again, from my understanding, the way it works is by providing an API to the developers. Basically, for every actions on my website, I'd send an API call to lessneglect.

I think I like it.. mostly because I find it's very hard to follow my users across my websites to know what's happening. I use external tools such as Google analytic and mixpanel.. but even then, it's more of a "stats" page than a real feed of what's happening.

I think the homepage has some cool UI effect but the important messaging is missing. I'd cut the "Turn upside-down" or "Less Neglect is web software that takes the job of supporting customers to the next level.".

thegooley6• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback, and if you have any specific ideas of how we can better explain it - please shoot them my way. And yeah, we'll see about getting rid of the marketing-speak in our next update.

Sounds like you've groked the big concept, but we'd love it if people didn't have to ponder over it before understanding what it is. Thanks for taking the time.

dcu• 14 years ago

looks very good. I'd suggest to rework the video since I can't see anything. Also I would move the how it works section (http://lessneglect.com/customer-analytics#how-it-works) to the top of the page since it's the most important part you need to show to the people right now.

pc86• 14 years ago

If this page is any indication of the actual app, I'm actually looking forward to paying for it.

thegooley6• 14 years ago

And we look forward to accepting your money!

oscilloscope• 14 years ago

Change the name. The double negative is confusing, and the word "neglect" reminds me of toddlers crying because they haven't been fed or dogs whimpering in a hot car. It sounds like a non-profit trying to guilt me into donating money to stop human trafficking. There are so many negative connotations you'll activate in people's minds before they read that it's an app to "proactively provide stellar support".

It's cute with Less Accounting, because obviously accounting is necessary and you could never get rid of it all (or want to). But it's not cute with neglect. Neglect is not a business necessity, and "Less Neglect" just reminds me of all the neglect your app probably won't address.

The name is a downer.

"Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care." ~Wikipedia

blink1st2• 14 years ago

I think that's point of the name.

masukomi• 14 years ago

I think the name is perfect. It emphasizes the fact that most sites neglect their users. Using this product will reduce the amount of neglect your give them... or so they claim.

robmil• 14 years ago

That's not what a double negative is: neither of those words are negatives. Pejorative, maybe, but it's not as though they cancel each other out like "not not" does.

sync• 14 years ago

Just went through the demo. You definitely have a nice start. Seems like a combo of Mixpanel and intercom.io.

I would recommend a JS API to reduce barriers to entry.

Even better if it can install a little widget on my site that allows the user to ask a question or view their past conversations, a la intercom.io.

thegooley6• 14 years ago

We actually do have a JS API [1] but we wanted to focus on a quick demo for developers rather than an integration wizard. I think it's important for people to understand the premise and how it's a bit different than other "analytics" products and just logging pageviews ala Google Analytics will give a sub-optimal experience.

We need to put a lot more work into the onboarding process (we created the whole public site and api docs and demo wizard over the weekend) so if you have any good examples of "getting started" flows that make sense, please send them my way.

[1] http://lessneglect.com/api (and select the Javascript tab on the code samples)

forcer• 14 years ago

Is it just me but I am getting quite annoyed by wonderfuly designed pages which really get you pumped to use the product but then when you click to Sign up you get this Waiting list option/ queue/ MVP style dissapointment? I would appreciate if posters made it upfront in the HN submission that signup is disabled.

corywatilo3• 14 years ago

Actually you can register and use it right now through the API! Since the best way to use Less Neglect is by integrating through the API, we opted to launch using that method.

dirtyaura• 14 years ago

Really good idea. I'm going to steal it, if that's okay :)

Developers who get it are immediately delighted so you create a positive experience from the start for your first users and naturally limit the early access to people who can actually start pushing data to your service themselves.

pbreit• 14 years ago

I would ordinarily agree but not in this case. You actually can register and use the service immediately with some simple "curl-ing" in the terminal. Which I found to be a brilliant initial user experience.

jasongullickson• 14 years ago

I was just about to say that! Very smart to target the developer audience by focusing on how they will interact with the product (also brave).

gouggoug• 14 years ago

Nice demo, the product looks very interesting.

I'm, however, a bit surprised that you used real user data in the demo. I don't know exactly how FolioHD works, and I don't know if the data we see in the demo are already public, but it kind of made me tick.

ljensen• 14 years ago

Nice interface. I like how the smart prioritization and timeline add context to the end customer. This looks like a useful community management tool.

I don't understand the customer support aspect of the tool beyond offering a customer view and messaging. The video demo glosses over what a customer support issue would look like since the person had already figured out the problem by the time Support could respond. Can you offer a demonstration of what an exchange might look like if support was needed?

Also, your use of the word "proactive" made me think that the tool helps anticipate problems. Every example demonstrated reaction(sending emails after a sign-up or payment event). Even your Crewpedia case study was a reactive example because support had to respond and make changes to the UI based on how people were using the page. Can you offer some examples of how the tool allowed users to expect an event? Otherwise, I suggest using a different word such as "insightful" or "contextual".

thegooley6• 14 years ago

We struggled to really explain the value prop in a 2 minute video, for sure.

The concept of proactive (as it exists in our beta) is more in the sense of "fix their problem before they have to ask you to fix it". But our goal is absolutely to help you to "fix their problem before they know they have a problem".

We've been able to do that to a certain extent with FolioHD customers manually by seeing patterns in their usage where we can suggest an optimization.

For instance:

We see a user uploading images one by one and can shoot them a message saying: "hey john, did you know that you can select all your images at once when you're uploading? save some time!"

or, we see someone uploading custom images to use for their homepage slideshow that are branded with logos that don't look great in their portfolio proper, so we can reach out and say "hey jamie - did you know you can create a separate gallery for your homepage features and then hide it so it doesn't show up inside your portfolio?"

So this is what we mean when we say "proactive". When we see one or two people having problems, we can help them out to best use our product. And if we see a lot of people missing key features, we know that we need some UX work.

It's been pretty great, and that's why we figured we should polish it up and release it for other people to use.

blink1st2• 14 years ago

Hmm interesting way to launch a service. What the heck is CURL?

lsllc• 14 years ago

Nice app! What did you build it with [on the backend]?

devgutt• 14 years ago

It seems really nice. Any information about how much will cost?

corywatilo3• 14 years ago

We're still trying to figure that out. I'd like to price it really low for small/bootstrapped teams and scale up based on the amount of data you're dumping into it. But right now we're focused on building out more of the product. Once we know what it will do, we'll have a better idea as to how we can price it.

ftwinnovations• 14 years ago

I like the product idea and am in the market for a CS solution, but I am hesitant to even try based on my expectations on pricing. I'd use it on a site with about 20k to 25k registrations per day, maybe 100k or so logins, and probably a million or so actions I'd track. Any ballparks on pricing or would this not be a good solution for a site like mine?

corywatilo3• 14 years ago

In fact, Less Neglect would be perfect for a large scale installation like this where you could really see benefits from the data crunching we do.

As far as pricing and details, if you can shoot us an email, we can chat offline and see if we can come up with something reasonable. support at lessneglect.com

nathancahill• 14 years ago

Looks pretty cool. Is a Python library in the cards?

oomkiller• 14 years ago

It seems like this uses email as it's sole form of communication. I'd like to see the ability to have internal messaging, like intercom.io.

tonynero• 14 years ago

this looks pretty cool and i'm trying it out now.

I have already sent events but the dashboard insists on always showing me the wizard (and i have to click close wizard)

Also once you are logged in, how do you get to the API docs? The main site insists on redirecting you to your dashboard if you are logged in.

Lastly, I seem to be getting some server 500 errors on some ajax requests. please see your support email.

Just what i've been looking for my 4k to 5k daily users ~30k monthlies users where javascript isn't an option - so hopefully its a nice fit.

Show HN: We built a better solution for customer analysis and support

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