
How I manage customer feedback for my bootstrapped SaaS - tnolet
https://blog.checklyhq.com/how-i-manage-customer-feedback-for-my-bootstrapped-saas/
======
seanwilson
> I was SUPER skeptical about the chat widget. I personally found them
> annoying, overbearing and could not imagine them working for customer
> support or sales. > Boy was I wrong. As in completely, utterly, totally
> wrong.

I've found a chat widget really helpful for my own product
([https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)) - I find the reduced
lag of the chat format means problems get resolved quicker on both ends and
the style of replying (e.g. maybe 16 short messages back and forth with chat
via 4 longer ones with email) results in you getting more information and
making more of a connection with your users.

I use the free tier of [https://crisp.chat](https://crisp.chat) but most of
them are fairly similar for basic usage. I would say avoid using one that has
that annoying "Hey! You! How can I help?" automatic pop-up feature though.

~~~
wjossey
I'm a big fan of the team at Drift, as the product itself is very good- They
just make it really easy to have their product _be annoying_ which is why so
many of us complain about that.

I will also say we use live chat extensively in our product and it's nothing
but great. We have a sub 1 minute median response rate for all chat requests,
and our customers love it. Great support matters, and chat is great support.

~~~
seanwilson
> We have a sub 1 minute median response rate for all chat requests, and our
> customers love it. Great support matters, and chat is great support.

When the person replying on chat is knowledgable and is able to reply quickly,
it's a great support experience on both ends I think.

Automatic pop-ups, bots replying instead of humans and unhelpful support staff
is what gives chat a bad reputation but when used right I think chat can be an
order of magnitude improvement over email.

Email can be used badly as well - I find some large companies take several
days to reply to support emails and have staff that mostly reply with
templates triggered by a few words in your message instead of understanding
what you're asking.

~~~
wjossey
Great point on email being bad as well.

I've been going back and forth with Google on an oauth consent screen approval
for 2.5 months now, all over email, with multi-week gaps between each response
from them.

I'd give anything to just hop on a live chat with them an answer any questions
they have.

~~~
philipkiely
SAME! I have a product that I'm trying to launch and everything works except
that it needs OAuth consent approval. There is currently a bug in my Google
console preventing me from completing the step that the most recent email said
to do, and I've responded with that several times and it just feels like I'm
shouting into the void.

------
mrskitch
Nice work, Tim! Glad to see you’re still doing well, hoping the best for you
and ChecklyHQ.

I’ve also thought and noticed similar results with the on-site chat UIs. I
really don’t like them from a consumer perspective, but they sure do get used
a lot. We went with small.chat since I practically live in Slack anymore.
We’ll see how that plays out.

Thanks for the write up!

~~~
tnolet
Tnx! And yeah, I was totally wrong about chat widgets.

------
lostsock
We have a chat widget for our product aimed at elemantary school teachers and
they absolutely love it.

We get everything from random praise, to sales inquiries, to technical support
questions, questions about the resources themselves, pedagogical questions.

We use slaask.com (which incidently I first saw on HN) so each incoming chat
request is just a new channel on slack, super easy to use and a huge feature
for us. In fact it's one of the most often commented on part of the
presentation where we ask prospective clients to say hi and they get an answer
back from a real person within seconds, it's really helped our conversion
rates.

------
stickfigure
We built our entire sales inquiry, customer support, and help system around
intercom.io. It cost $50/mo for the first year (their startup introductory
plan) but we never would have gotten off the ground without it. At launch our
product was pretty raw and the documentation was thin; we got through that
period by being constantly on top of customer support.

Customers are incredibly forgiving when they feel that they're being listened
to. This kind of support is one of those "things that don't scale" that you
can do in the early stage to build a foothold while you refine your product.

~~~
paxys
It can scale if you invest the necessary resources into it. Slack's customer
support is a good example.

------
zild3d
Thanks, super helpful as another bootstrapping just-2-founders team.

Also - for the public roadmap, trello works really well for this

[https://blog.trello.com/going-public-roadmapping-with-a-
publ...](https://blog.trello.com/going-public-roadmapping-with-a-public-
trello-board)

------
gnicholas
I'm considering adding a chat option to my site but am wondering how to decide
when to make myself available as a solo founder. That is, I don't want my
phone buzzing at me whenever I'm awake, as that would drive me (and more
importantly, my wife) crazy.

How do folks decide when to have these chat options available, to balance
growth/customer support with having a life?

~~~
Jack000
I'm curious too. I just let most of my chat messages go to email.

How do you hire for this, especially when the message volume is low (eg.
average 1 per 10 minutes or so)

~~~
gnicholas
If you let messages go to email, do they come through with an email address
you can respond to? I'd imagine that email replies that begin "I'm the founder
of X" probably get a better-than-average open rate.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to frustrate people who typed something into
what appeared to be a live chat window — expecting a live human — and got
either a bot or a delayed email response (after a request for email address,
of course). Seems like there's definitely upside potential here, but also the
risk of frustrating/angering people. I'd hope there's a way to hide the chat
box during certain hours, to mitigate the latter.

~~~
Jack000
the user have to reenter their email, so it's opt in.

some people do expect a live response, but some also expect a bot. People have
come to associate chat bubbles with chat bots I think

------
ryeguy_24
I like your product. Slightly off topic, but how did you initially 1) validate
your idea and 2) get your first customers for private beta?

~~~
tnolet
The idea needed very little validation. There are many monitoring tools out
there. I kinda think of myself as the Digital Ocean vs AWS.

First customers was Betalist and some blogposts

------
osrec
We just installed a chat widget on [https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com) and
can confirm that it not only helps conversions, but has become the main
support channel.

I personally never found them _too_ annoying, but hesitated to add one to our
landing page because of the general negativity surrounding them on HN.

~~~
tnolet
Negative on HN is mostly positive in real life!

~~~
osrec
Haha, often true. We're a critical bunch :p

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sosodev
FYI one of the images on your landing page has a z-index that's higher than
the navbar.

~~~
tnolet
good catch! Tnx

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andrethegiant
I'd suggest Nolt for the public roadmap feature. There isn't a lot of
whitelabelling functionality but it works in a pinch.
[https://nolt.io/](https://nolt.io/)

~~~
tnolet
Looks good, but at $25 a month I'd rather use free until I have a spot for it
on my monthly expenses.

------
jedberg
Not surprised about the chat widgets. I too hate the ones that pop up and make
noise, but I've used them more than once when I needed help. They seem to be
the quickest response!

~~~
jeromegv
Same. I run an e-commerce site and waited and waited before I put one up, I
just thought they were annoying (even with no sound) and rarely used. God was
I wrong. Within the first day I was making sales over people asking questions
on the chat and ordering right away.

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PudgePacket
The "check interval" tooltip for business on your pricing page doesn't match
what's in the table :), thanks for the cool post thought!

