I’ve had the opportunity to begin leading a new live chat initiative at Automattic with a few other awesome Happiness Engineers and thought it might be worthwhile to post some thoughts. Live chat support is a big push within Automattic this year as we strive to give our customers the best and fastest method of support possible. We’re starting off slow, but hope to ramp up as the year goes on.

Live chat support is very exciting since it’s an almost immediate way to help users, where as they may have to wait hours or even days in extreme cases to get help via email. As long as there are enough happiness engineers online to handle the volume, users can expect quick response times and fast follow-up replies from those helping them. It’s is also preferable to email because the issue is usually resolved once the chat is finished, whereas email correspondence could take several emails to resolve an issue, often spread over days. In rare cases we may need to follow-up with the user via email if their issue can’t be fixed immediately, but that’s easy enough to do and doesn’t disrupt the flow of incoming chats too much.

The rapid fire nature of live chat support can be a bit overwhelming at first, but everyone adjusts quickly and once they’re up to speed on the tool and feel confident in giving answers, we can all handle 3 or more chats at once with relative ease. It definitely helps to use a tool like TextExpander to have some general replies and links ready to go, but I generally wouldn’t recommend having large blocks of text as snippets since the conversation then begins to lose its informal feel.

All in all, this has been a great experience, and I look forward to expanding it even more as the year goes on. We’re already planning a live chat focused meetup later this year so we can brainstorm how to refine and improve our current setup. If you have questions or comments about what we’re doing, I’d be happy to receive those. The best way to get in touch with me is via Twitter.

Originally published here.

In my last review, I covered Tender and how it seems perfect for a small startup or other company looking to move from simple email support to a more robust ticket tracking solution. Now we’re going to take a look at Desk which is not only geared towards tracking tickets, but towards helping a large support team support an even larger user base.

More Than Just Email

Desk is made by the very successful folks behind Salesforce, a well-known CRM tool. Desk goes beyond emails and tracking tickets, it allows for social media integration, live chat, and even phone support. It’s no wonder then that companies like DirecTV, Square, Vimeo, and many others turn to Desk for their support app.

Another attractive feature is the mobile apps that Desk offers, allowing agents to stay on top of the support queue no matter where they are. Apps are available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.

Customization

As with most of the other tools I’ll review, customization is pretty simple, allowing for custom domain names, style selection, and the like. Desk also offers integrations with many other services your company might already be using, so tying into those is a breeze.

Pricing

Pricing’s straight forward. The first agent is entirely free – no catches. Then, you can add other agents in at $49/month/agent. Or, you can go the “flex agent” route. That lets anyone use Desk for $1/hour/agent. It’s a great setup for adding in full-time support reps but still letting the rest of your team answer an email here and there without paying for another full-time agent.

Final Thoughts

In the end, we did not go with Desk for our support app. But it was definitely a contender. It is well worth a look if you need some of the very advanced features it offers, and is priced competitively as well.

This is part of the Customer Support App Review series. Read more articles in the series.

 

Tender is a great little support app with all of the features a growing support team might need. It seems to be geared toward start-up type organizations, with a minimalist design, only the features you need, and an “easy as email” feel. LIke most other similar applications, Tender replaces a simple support email address and aggregates and tracks support requests in an easy to use interface. It also offers a great Knowledge Base where users can search for answers themselves before contacting support.

Customization

Customizing the look and feel of your helpdesk with Tender is easy as well. Changing text, adding custom CSS, and using your own custom domain name are super simple. You can even integrate your own app’s login system with Tender so there’s no need for your users to create another account!

Pricing

Pricing is comparable to other services available out there. It starts at $9/month with the top-tier plan coming in at $99/month. You get a free 14-day trial to test it out and kick the tires.

And one neat perk is that open source projects get a free account!

Final Thoughts

While we at Ubuntu One didn’t end up choosing Tender, I would still highly recommend it. Our needs are rather unique, so we needed something a little more robust and customizable. However, if you’re looking for a very simple, easy to use solution to get up and running quickly, you should definitely take a look at Tender.

This is part of the Customer Support App Review series. Read more articles in the series.

If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re pretty fanatical about support. When it comes to the tools we use to support our customers, we’ve tried a lot. Being the sharing types that we are, customer support tool reviews seemed a natural thing to do.

A little background before we begin. I work at Canonical providing customer support for users of Ubuntu One. Since being hired, I’ve been working on finding and transitioning our support to a newer, more robust application. While doing the research, I was talking with Chase quite a bit. He suggested that maybe I should write a few posts on the tools I looked into and why we ended up deciding on the one that we did.

What follows is by no means an exhaustive review of each tool, but I hope these reviews will at least get you started if you’re looking to implement something for the first time, or you’re not satisfied with your current tool. The list below is in no particular order except that I’m saving the one we went with for the end. Enjoy, and feel free to hit me up on Twitter with any comments/questions.

The Customer Support Apps

These are the ones I focused on in the hunt.

1. Tender
2. Desk
3. UserVoice
4. HelpSpot
5. Snappy
6. Zendesk

Bonus Reviews

1. The other Chase’s review of Desk, an app that he’s been using for over a year.
2. Luke talks about using SupportBee for his team.
3. The other Chase takes a look at Help Scout.

If you use one that’s not listed here, I’d love to add your review to the list. Just get in touch with us here.

Now on to the reviews!