I’m Ali Rayl. - Accelerator and Fund for Developer and Enterprise Startups … · 2020. 3. 4. ·...
Transcript of I’m Ali Rayl. - Accelerator and Fund for Developer and Enterprise Startups … · 2020. 3. 4. ·...
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I’m Ali Rayl.I work on the internet.
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Support is probably not your end goal.
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Startup #1, the successful one, circa 2000 (pre-
acquisition): !
Developers are responsible for all product
support.
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Startup #1, the successful one, circa 2000 (pre-
acquisition): !
Developers are responsible for all product
support.
me
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Startup #1, the successful one, circa 2000 (pre-
acquisition): !
Developers are responsible for all product
support.
me
on the phone
on the phone
on the phone
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Startup #1, the successful one, circa 2000 (pre-
acquisition): !
Developers are responsible for all product
support.
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Startup #1, the successful one, circa 2000 (pre-
acquisition): !
Developers are responsible for all product
support.lololol
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Startup #1: Our Support Toolset
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Startup #1: Our Support Toolset
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• Home-grown FileMaker Pro database — CMS and email support tool
Startup #1: Our Support Toolset
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• Home-grown FileMaker Pro database — CMS and email support tool
• name-support@ email addresses — all support correspondence in the database
Startup #1: Our Support Toolset
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• Home-grown FileMaker Pro database — CMS and email support tool
• name-support@ email addresses — all support correspondence in the database
• A single phone number for support — every developer had an extension on their desk that would ring
Startup #1: Our Support Toolset
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Startups #2 through #6
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Startups #2 through #6¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Startup #7: Glitch
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Startup #7:
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Startup #7: Slack
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Slack Support Tickets, first six months
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0
500
1500
2500
1000
2000Slack Support Tickets, first six months
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Lessons from the first major growth phase
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Lessons from the first major growth phase
• Structure your support queue through a triage process
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Lessons from the first major growth phase
• Structure your support queue through a triage process
• Choose a tool that you can grow into as your customer base grows
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Lessons from the first major growth phase
• Structure your support queue through a triage process
• Choose a tool that you can grow into as your customer base grows
• Give yourself the ability to throttle growth if it has the potential to outstrip your ability to support it
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Slack Support Triage
• Problem
• Question
• Feedback
• Feature Request
About field
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Choose a support tool that can handle growth
• Hit our 20x growth moment and realized that we had no sustainable way to manage the support queue
• Resulted in lots of hacks and workarounds and wasted time
• The extra monthly cost of a better tool was more than offset by the cost of the time we lost dealing with the cheaper tool
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Give yourself the ability to throttle during growth periods• Realized early on that new user onboarding was
the most support-intensive time for a user
• Users were invited to the platform when we were confident we could support them
• Provided a line-skipping mechanism (referrals) for those who weren’t keen on waiting for an invite
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1000
3000
5000
2000
4000
Slack Support Tickets, first year
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Lessons from the second major growth phase
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Lessons from the second major growth phase
• Know your PR cycles
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Lessons from the second major growth phase
• Know your PR cycles
• Unless you have some reason to believe that this time will be different, assume it’ll be roughly the same as last time
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Lessons from the second major growth phase
• Know your PR cycles
• Unless you have some reason to believe that this time will be different, assume it’ll be roughly the same as last time
• This does not get any easier
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Lessons from the second major growth phase
• Know your PR cycles
• Unless you have some reason to believe that this time will be different, assume it’ll be roughly the same as last time
• This does not get any easier
• But it can be more manageable
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Know your patterns
• When are tickets created?
• How important is it to answer them promptly? Do you have a service that is mission-critical?
• What expectations have you set with your customer base for turnaround time?
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Know your patterns
• When are tickets created?
• How important is it to answer them promptly? Do you have a service that is mission-critical?
• What expectations have you set with your customer base for turnaround time?
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Know your patterns (cont.)
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Slack Support Toolset
Zendesk!
• Email support
• Product built-in support
Respondly!
• Twitter support
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Respondly for Twitter
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Zendesk for everything else
!(No screenshot — you can see this on the internet if you’d like)
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Generic Advice Time
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Not every support request is a request for
product support.
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Business decisions do not belong in your
support queue.
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Product decisions do not belong in your support
queue.
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You can use support as a shield.
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You are problem solvers.
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You cannot solve every problem.
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Stay focused.