

Show HN: PilarHQ, The Posterous of Customer Support - hajrice
http://pilarhq.com/

======
hajrice
PilarHQ, is a product which I've been secretly building for my other projects.
I wanted a "light-weight" customer support tool for startups and projects
which I hack on. Zendesk is kinda complicated, as it requires some training. I
wanted something really really simple - like posterous.

It works simply: You cc/forward any support you'd like to be published on your
help page to post@pilarhq.com and we update your support page. If people come
to your support/help page, search for an answer via our instant search and
dont find an answer, they just have to leave their email and your entire
support team is notified.

PilarHQ is lightweight because all you do is pretty much embed an iFrame to
your site at pilar and you're set. Thats really all there is to it. You later
on recieve emails from us and your customers, if you forward the ones you want
to publish, we publish it to your cool support page.

------
roxstar
I don't understand, what is the _posterous of customer support_?

~~~
christopherslee
agree with the above,

it's unclear to me if i'm outsourcing support or if this is like an
autoupdating FAQ page?

~~~
hajrice
Pretty much an autoupdating FAQ page.

I was planing on emailing you with a demo, but you don't have your email in
your profile. Email me at hajrice@gmail.com if you want a demo.

------
ramanujam
I think it is better to build your own brand name rather than relying on
another one. An 'autoupdating FAQ system' is a better description/tagline than
calling it Posterous for customer support. Posterous is famous but what if a
small online flower retailer wants to use your product and he has no idea what
Posterous is? It is better to directly explain what your product does rather
than relating it to another one.

On the other hand, if a tech blog writes PilarHQ is the posterous for customer
support, that is well and good!

~~~
hajrice
Hi there. Thanks for your comment and to be honest, this is still a test
whether or not I should release this to the public and build it into a
product. That being said, I totally agree with ya. So many people want a
posterous for support. An autoupdating faq system is slightly vague, a
posterous for support is much more descriptive from my perspective.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't understand what "Posterous for support" means. Posterous is a blog,
how can I use that for support? Also, how does this autoupdate? There's
nothing on the front page about it :/

~~~
hajrice
Sure. I made a bad decision using this way of explaining an idea. Sure wont do
it again. Here's a simple flow from your customer's perspective.

\- goes to your website

\- Search's your help page, if cant find it, email you

\- You get an email, you respond to it, customer is notified

\- IF you forward that email to a special cool email which we give you, it's
published on your support page(which is embeddable to your website).

\- Next person searching for this question doeesnt have to email you as
they're problem's solved!

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, I see, thanks. That does sound handy!

------
edmccaffrey
Lots of people not understanding what this is. Perhaps you could put up a help
page.

~~~
hajrice
haha, good one. I should, right after I send out the emails with account
details.

------
krobertson
Sounds like a great idea, but I'm always wary of businesses whose tagline is
"Like X, but for Y".

Not going to start a business and say "Like LinkedIn, but for dental
hygienists".

~~~
hajrice
I definitely agree with you. I made a big mistake using this annotation for my
idea, won't ever happen again, as it's really not that similar to posterous.

That being said, please look at my response to StavrosK for a quick overview
of a simple user story ... just in case you're wondering.

------
bjoernw
"By allowing you to forwarding all your support emails to a special
address..."

By allowing you to _forward_

~~~
hajrice
Hey, sorry for that, didn't notice it. Fixed it now.

------
kevinherron
"By allowing you to forwarding all your support emails to a special address"

HRrrrk... grammar.

~~~
hajrice
Whoops, haha. I'm sorry for that, didn't see it. Fixed now.

