

Ask HN: Review my startup, SupportFu.com - veesahni

We believe current help desk solutions are bloated and unnecessarily complicated. So we built something better - SupportFu. An intuitive, simple and mostly invisible help desk. It helps teams manage their support tickets without forcing their users to log in and remember ticket numbers.<p>I think it's perfect for small teams who have outgrown their shared inbox.<p>http://www.supportfu.com<p>We're currently in private beta.  Just mention HN in the signup comments to skip the the wait list ;)
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edwinyzh
Apart from the good things:

1 - You should show more screenshots in the home page, e.g. what the 'submit a
ticket' page look like?

2 - Don't use hand-writing style typefaces in the screenshots, that's
difficult to read for none-native English speakers (me included).

3 - You might want to check out Freshdesk, I was planning to use it for
LIVEditor (<http://liveditor.com>) after checked a handful online support
services, but gave up because the performance (pages took near 10 seconds to
load).

Just my 2 cents.

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veesahni
Thanks for the feedback.

1\. Your customers 'submit a ticket' by sending you an email, literally. We
track threads internally.. A form widget to put on your site is in the works..

2\. didn't think about that... thanks

3\. You should try SupportFu - we've focussed on UI speed and frendliness :)

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revorad
This is really well done. After reading everything, the big question in my
mind is how does this work? After signing up, what's the first step I need to
take to get going? Please show me that process before asking me to sign up. A
video would be great, but screenshots are also enough.

I say this because apart from the dollar price, the biggest cost to me is my
time and effort to switch. You do a good job of conveying that Supportfu will
probably make my life easier once I've started using it, but I want to know
what it will take to get there.

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veesahni
We've tried to minimize friction to make the signup process simple

Step 1. Sign Up

Step 2. Forward your support email address to an address we provide

Step 3. Invite your team

At this point, you are up and going. You can then customize signatures, tweak
your notification preferences, setup your tags, etc..

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knes
You should put those 3 steps on to your website. It shows how easy to setup
your service is.

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veesahni
With the feedback we received, we do plan to update the pre-signup pages to
include some details on the ease of signup.

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rnochumo
I recorded a user test for SupportFu on BetaPunch:
<http://www.betapunch.com/startups/view/267>.

I set up the email forwarding and tested by sending an email to that account
so it would appear as a ticket. But I never got the email into my supportfu
account... Also i agree that there is no clear call to action on where / how
to sign up.

Good luck to you!

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veesahni
Hey Ross, looking at your video, I believe you missed setting up the
forwarding address in gmail after clicking the confirmation link. If that were
the case, then the email would never be forwarded by Google (and never make it
into your SupportFu account). Thanks for taking the time to make the video and
giving us feedback!

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creativename
It looks great - very nicely designed, and I immediately understand the
benefit. However, that landing page could do a better job having a call to
action visible right away. I don't see anything until I scroll to the very
bottom, and even then it's just a link to check out pricing.

Also, I don't see any information regarding how it actually integrates with my
site (ie. how do users actually submit a ticket?)

~~~
veesahni
We've been experimenting with CTA flows. With a simple email form at the top,
people signed but were non responsive when we reached out for feedback. The
current flow gets us a lot less signups, but those who do signup are
interested and motivated.

And good point about integration, it's not very clear from the site. For what
it's worth, users send email to support@yourdomain.com which you forward to an
address we provide at signup.

~~~
creativename
Ah, gotcha. Well good to hear you're testing to optimize your signups!

I'm not ready for a support product yet, but I'll definitely keep you guys in
mind.

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codegeek
I like the design. Neat. Coming from a large corporate environment, i cannot
even start to tell how bad of help desk systems we have to use. Anyway, one
thing that confuses me is a pricing tier with more than 3 options. May be you
can combine it into 3: FREE, small business, large business (something like
this).

~~~
veesahni
Thanks for the feedback...

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ScottWhigham
Looks great - like how you've laid it all out. I'm interested in a replacement
for ZenDesk but just FYI: for us, if a system doesn't have an iPhone/iPad app,
it just won't cut it. Not slagging on you - just telling you some of the
feedback you'll likely hear from others.

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veesahni
Thanks - mobile support is definitely on our list but there are a "few" things
that we need to get done first :)

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lexbryan
I would love to try the service. I don't have a company yet but I'm working as
an engr. for a company that uses other help desk provider.

thanks.

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veesahni
clickable link: <http://www.supportfu.com>

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vaske
clean and nice design, I like idea and realization! good work!

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Juuumanji
looks well thought out. good work

~~~
veesahni
thanks!

