
High-Touch Onboarding - raywu
http://blog.magicbus.io/post/137622700537/do-things-that-dont-scale
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simonswords82
Yep, same thing works for us on our HR app for small and medium companies
called www.staffsquared.com.

While the automated lifecycle e-mails we generate are great at conveying
useful information to new trial customers, one of the things that really set
us apart from the competition is our free of charge onboarding customer
service.

We tell customers that we'll do literally whatever it takes to get them
onboard, even if that means entering their data manually for them. The
lifetime revenue from a new paying customer makes this relatively small admin
task, which relieves lots of friction, full of win.

We also generate a couple of e-mails to new customers both on a schedule and
also when certain user activities are performed. The e-mails are designed to
appear handcrafted and ask if we can provide any assistance with a particular
feature or process. If our customers need anything they simply hit reply at
which point a human picks up the conversation.

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tamana
FYI those fake personal emails are totally obvious and everyone hates the fake
sincerity.

~~~
troydavis
The amazing thing is how many senders fool themselves into thinking they're
fooling users. The first commenter's description ("designed to appear
handcrafted") seems to fall into that category.

I hear senders cite an email open rate or click rate, but there's no way to
measure groans or "Do they think I've never signed up for a Web app?"
reactions. (Heck, maybe it does help for consumer-oriented services, where
many users actually haven't ever signed up for a Web app before.)

~~~
tedmiston
But you're an early adopter / power user, exposed to this plenty, and most
users aren't that savvy.

Though I also find these types of messages annoying, they do seem to get to a
higher interaction rate from _normal_ users.

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rw2
High touch onboarding is definitely worth it in a service where people use it
daily and there is a very high lifetime value for the customer.

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danieltillett
Out of curiosity how would this service ever make money? Won't it become very
capital intensive as it scales while the customer base appears to be driven by
price.

~~~
raywu
Benchmarking against all other modes of transportation definitely makes
commuting more of a commodity. All-in Cost of car ownership in a city or all-
in cost of multimodal transportation (uberpool to train to bus to walking) are
two ends of the spectrum people price against. Scale is actually a great thing
for this business.

~~~
danieltillett
Ray I am curious how close to the uber end your service falls? Have you done
any experiments in how price sensitive your customers are? My gut feeling is
that they are expecting uber like levels of service combined with public
transport level pricing, but I am more than happy to be corrected.

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pc86
Seems like a thinly veiled ad for MagicBus, but I guess most blog posts are
anyway.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about it, it's a good blog post,
just making an observation.

~~~
raywu
Something new we're trying in terms of onboarding. I would have never guessed
that people are receptive to random text messages from a service provider.

For one, I get annoyed by T-mobile happy holidays text—but probably also
because it's a canned text message.

~~~
rogerbinns
Is there any particular reason your website goes out of its way to avoid
mentioning where you already have service? The map of San Francisco in the
background seems to be the only clue.

The reason I mention this is because so many of these services are SF only,
but hide that information. I understand you want to gather analytics from
people entering addresses, but I don't want to waste my time doing so when the
most likely answer is "no service now, no service in the near future, no
service in adjacent areas ...". I get that my area isn't worth servicing now,
but this also means I can't even consider the service when I am elsewhere or
recommend it to anyone else, because service area information is wilfully
withheld.

~~~
raywu
Hi Roger, we have a service map and are trying to figure out the best way to
present the information. We can provide a coverage map, but that could also be
misleading.

For example, we can mark SF, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park as in service area. It
is not at all clear that we only run from SF to Palo Alto and SF to Menlo
Park, but not Menlo Park to Palo Alto.

We've been thinking about using some animation to make it more explicit. But
I'd love any idea from you.

Lastly, if you want to see a map, it's here:
[https://www.producthunt.com/tech/magicbus](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/magicbus)

~~~
rogerbinns
You can put it as text.

"We currently serve parts of SF, Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Please see ... for
a map and how we plan to expand our service."

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wtvanhest
I have friends that ride MB and they complain about the pickup locations
(mission street). Apparently they are worried about their safety in that area
because they are being picked up when its still dark or just after sunrise
when the street is basically empty.

Valencia seems like it would make a lot more sense from a safety standpoint.

I have personally heard amazing things about MB.

~~~
sneak
If you are unsafe waiting on a street after dark, you are unsafe waiting on a
street precisely one block west after dark.

~~~
wtvanhest
Maybe you don't know the area, but Valencia is full of people going to work at
6:30am on commuter buses. Mission street, not so much. It is desolate and
anyone waiting for a daily black car service for 20 minutes definitely stands
out and may become a target. The two people that I know that get rides from
their are female which sort of compounds the problem.

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shockzzz
It sounds like they need to have high-touch onboarding to maintain growth from
like, 1 -> 1000 Users, but at some point it'd be outrageous to maintain that
process.

If they don't have trust, they have poor Marketing, few Users, or both. To me,
this is a clear sign that they need a stronger #brand

~~~
raywu
We tried to solve the onboarding problem too early with tech (maybe pre-
mature?). I imagine the trade-off between mission-criticalness vs willingness-
to-try has a similar relationship to BJ Fogg's behavior model
[http://www.behaviormodel.org/](http://www.behaviormodel.org/) (motivation vs
ease to achieve).

~~~
shockzzz
Uh... are you just comparing one 2-dimensional graph with another one?
According to BJ Fogg, your automated onboarding should have worked.

My point was that it's fundamentally an issue of trust. High-touch onboarding
is not the only solution, but it might work for you right meow.

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hammock
How does this work when you are growing at 30,000 users per month?

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dpiers
It doesn't, but I think that's the point - you can do stuff that doesn't scale
when you're small and not worry about how to do it at scale until it becomes a
problem.

Another way of looking at it: giant existing corporations can't do things that
don't scale. If you're small, you can, and that's the competitive edge you
stick into the market to carve out a chunk of your own.

