Ask HN: What SaaS customer service tools does your startup use? - sedzia
======
yalooze
HelpScout ([https://www.helpscout.net/](https://www.helpscout.net/)).
Brilliant piece of software built by a bunch of people that really care.
Regular new features and improvements, an intelligent help desk that just gets
out of the way, and docs for customer self-service (they have a private option
for docs which we use for internal knowledgebases too)

~~~
anarchitect
We're not a startup, but we've had great success with Helpscout too. Our
customer service team absolutely love it, to the point where it's difficult to
convince them that Intercom is worth trying!

------
rushabh
We build all our tools from customer support, CRM, billing, payroll to
accounting -> [https://erpnext.com](https://erpnext.com). Its also open
source, and would love more startups to use it.
[https://github.com/frappe/erpnext](https://github.com/frappe/erpnext)

The benefit of open sources is that you can build deep integration to your
processes and also grow it as your company grows. With closed tools, you will
end up paying a lot and also lose the opportunity to drive more team
productivity by being unable hack and extend your tools.

------
freyfogle
We have started doing blog posts reviewing the various SaaS services we use:
[http://blog.opencagedata.com/tagged/toolsweuse](http://blog.opencagedata.com/tagged/toolsweuse)

so far we've covered * Baremetrics * Quaderno

coming soon: * Statsbot * Hosted Graphite * StatusCake * TravisCI * Drip *
TransferWise (not a SaaS service, but saves us a ton of money)

~~~
Faaak
Is there really much to say about StatusCake ? I use it and I have to say that
it seems too much simple (not enough alert terms, hasn't got hooks, too
expensive)..

~~~
djdclarke
StatusCake does support web hooks, along with 10 other integrations including
fully supporting advance alert routing. We also have all the features of major
monitoring services as well as virus scanning, domain monitoring, SSL
certificate monitoring and so many other features.

I mean, we also have a free plan that gives you monitoring (and hooks) along
with a wide range of features for an unlimited amount of sites!

Kind Regards, Daniel.

------
colinbartlett
StatusGator uses Freshdesk on the free plan and it's adequate for our needs.

Freshdesk has worked flawlessly and beautifully handles triaging a few support
requests and product feature suggestions every day. (Aside from a hiccup where
I misconfigured notifications and inadvertently ignored dozens of tickets for
a month... a PEBKAC issue.)

~~~
crikli
+1 for Freshdesk. Came over from Zendesk and at the time at least it was
(much) lower cost and worked better for our small biz. Great API as well with
good docs.

------
bbtorchia
We've used Desk.com for the past 2 or so years. For the most part, it has met
our needs. We built 3 separate knowledge bases for 3 separate products, used
macros to speed up answering common questions, and integrated third party
phone and chat apps so we can keep records all in one place. That being said,
we're probably going to be switching away. A few reasons here. First, it seems
like we encounter bugs, crashes, and more serious service-level disruptions
too often. Second, it is pretty expensive compared to other products out
there.

We came to Desk.com when we were really small. Our CTO was still the only dev
we had so we were looking for an out of the box solution that could be
customized by someone who was relatively non-technical. Desk can pretty much
handle a lot of this customization but what results is something a bit clunky
to use. This is not a criticism of Desk itself, more just an observation about
tools that promise customization without dev resources.

Anyway, I think we'll switch to HelpScout. I like that HelpScout defaults to
sending plain-text emails, where Desk emails look like they come from someone
using support desk software. Plus, they have all of the essential features
we're looking for at a better price.

Plus, I love HelpScout's content. I'm sure their marketers will love hearing
this, but all their blog posts and resources give me the impression that they
are a thoughtful company that understands customer support. It's always
surprising to see how many customer support tools offer horrible customer
support themselves. From my experience, that disconnect does not bode well for
their product.

------
coderholic
For [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) I use:

    
    
        - helpscout
        - chartmougal
        - fastmail
        - github
        - Travis
        - hookfeed
        - AWS

------
drusepth
None at Notebook.ai other than being active and responsive on social media and
linking various Google Forms on-site for reporting bugs, requesting features,
etc. Follow-up on those is by email. Since we're open source, we also invite
anyone to create issues on GitHub as well, though it's usually the more
technical crowd that do so.

Reasoning: 1) it's free, 2) quality customer service is free advertising when
it's public, and 3) there's less friction to "get in touch" with us (and
follow up quickly) when it's on a platform a user is already using.

Would definitely love to hear about a (free) quality customer service tool if
there are any out there, though. I think we're starting to outgrow
Forms/email, as some way to aggregate common requests together (without
manually building a spreadsheet, like now) and sort/filter/rank them would be
beneficial.

------
ajainy
For [https://snapcx.io](https://snapcx.io) , I have been experimenting with
freshdesk, zendesk and zoho too. In end, as we are simple startup, I decided
to stick with

    
    
      - Straight email support 
      - asciidoc generated html pages for documentation https://snapcx.io/docs
      - self hosted contact us form. (it sends email to support)
      - free zendesk chat. (as of today, it's one or two chat request, which sends email to support email)
      - As we are selling API subscription, I am hosting swagger based api explorer. (simple html page) 
      - https://snapcx.io/addressValidationAPI
    

My current gap is more intuitive documentation, which has search functionality
and also in-built api explorer. I believe readme.io has both but no customer
support features.

~~~
iMuzz
Hi Ajainy!

Engineer from ReadMe here. We do have a support forum that you can enable[0]
for your users. Is that the kind of customer support you were talking about?
If not, I'd be curious to know what you meant!

>[0] [https://readme.readme.io/docs/submit-a-
question](https://readme.readme.io/docs/submit-a-question)

~~~
ajainy
I was talking about support ticket etc.

~~~
iMuzz
Ah I see, we also have Zendesk integration so you can add the Zendesk widget
to your ReadMe site.

>
> [https://readme.readme.io/docs/zendesk](https://readme.readme.io/docs/zendesk)

------
nikentic
Groove ([https://www.groovehq.com/](https://www.groovehq.com/)) only. We're
super happy with it!

~~~
coleca
We use Groove also. It works fine but we do wish it had any kind of mobile
support. Even if the desktop site would just function in a mobile browser
would be helpful. Two way Slack integration would be a dream (it has
notification only now. You can't respond to tickets from slack).

~~~
bitmedley
it looks like Groove will be releasing a mobile app any day now (expected
release early March 2017).

[https://help.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/does-
groove-...](https://help.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/does-groove-have-
a-mobile-app)

~~~
esw
I really hope they do, but be aware that this date keeps changing. The last
time I checked this page, it was spring 2016.

------
ezekg
Drift has worked pretty well for me so far. Use Zendesk for another product
and I'm not a big fan.

~~~
LogicX
Second on [http://Drift.com](http://Drift.com). Pleasantly surprised how many
great conversations it drives for us at
[https://DNSFilter.com](https://DNSFilter.com)

------
fgl_luke
Olark really helped us with our customer service, we use both the live chat
feature, and the 'email us' feature for when nobody is available on live chat.

We expected it would help us to respond to support requests better - which it
did, but it also offered some advantages that we didn't expect:

\- Users are way more likely to reach out in the first place due to the easy
live chat/email widget on each page

\- In some cases we have actually been able to use the data from Olark to
determine the quality of our traffic and landing page (e.g. users are not
understanding our message, or we are getting a lot of queries about something
unrelated to our product [targeting issue])

~~~
giarc
We have just implemented Olark as well. We had a problem where a ton of our
new users were signing up for our product and then radio silence. Wouldn't log
in again, wouldn't respond to personal emails from myself. We implemented
Olark to hopefully catch those people when they are signing up and get them
engaged. It hasn't been long enough to tell if it's working or not, but we're
hoping.

------
veesahni
Self-Plug. We use our own product
([http://www.enchant.com](http://www.enchant.com)) to support our customers ..
It covers email support, a knowledge base website, live chat widget for the
marketing site (i.e. sales), and an in-app widget that offers both live chat
and an embedded knowledge base.

Try it out - it's faster than gmail :)

~~~
troydavis
I'm a very happy paying customer of Enchant. We tested Intercom (much broader
scope than we wanted), Helpscout (among other things, no Markdown support),
and a handful of other tools. Enchant does what we need, nothing we don't, and
stays out of the way.

------
bcarroll22
We just finished building our own customer support tool to save some money
(we're a bootstrapped startup). We wanted live chat for customers that went
straight to our Slack, since we already use it for so much. We couldn't find
anything else that worked the way we wanted, so we built it.

~~~
giarc
That's very interesting. We use Slack a ton and just recently started on the
Olark free plan (22 chats/month). I would love for chats to go to a separate
slack channel instead of having to keep another tab open. Not to mention Olark
doesn't have mobile support.

~~~
johne20
We had the same desire, that is why we built Chatlio a few years ago.
[https://chatlio.com/](https://chatlio.com/)

~~~
giarc
Looks great! Thanks for sharing the link.

------
mnort9
Drift [https://www.drift.com](https://www.drift.com)

------
edibleEnergy
Plug: we are in private beta with Feedback[1], the customer support version of
BugReplay[2]. We integrate with Zendesk aside from our standard custom
JavaScript integration.

In short, it's a product for Web development teams to collect perfect no-
hassle bug reports from their users with all the details (video, network
traffic, js logs) required to analyze and reproduce a problem.

[1]: [https://www.bugreplay.com/feedback-by-
bugreplay](https://www.bugreplay.com/feedback-by-bugreplay)

[2]: [https://www.bugreplay.com](https://www.bugreplay.com)

------
palmeida
At viurdata.com we use Live Chat
[https://www.livechatinc.com/](https://www.livechatinc.com/) Good piece of
software and we also take advantage of their ticket system

------
verelo
This has been interesting to read and raises an interesting question: it
appears lots of you are leaving Zendesk and now using something else...

1) We still Zendesk here, what inspired you to leave?

2) What do you like about where you landed?

~~~
BillFranklin
We moved to Zendesk from Intercom for support. We still use Intercom, but just
for product outreach and triggered messages.

We have two former Zendeskers on our team, which is part of the reason we made
the switch. But also because Zendesk has things that Intercom doesn't/didn't
have at the time, like a help desk.

You can also customize Zendesk with integrations pretty easily, such as by
adding widgets[1]. Building and maintaining a Zendesk widget is a great
developer experience.

[1]
[https://www.zendesk.com/embeddables/](https://www.zendesk.com/embeddables/)

------
bculper
None. Reason: Capacity and focus on product. Are we doing it wrong?

~~~
andor
Do you have a feedback channel? How do you know your product is on track to
meet customer needs?

~~~
bculper
We do have a "Beta feedback" process for all users (which is essentially a
one-way communication for now) which allows us to gather their input. In
addition to our Pirate analytics, we also use Mouseflow to observe user
behavior. So we are gathering data both directly from users (although we could
probably improve the beta feedback process) and from analytics, we just don't
have a lot of extra time since we have other jobs at the moment.

------
philippnagel
Zendesk. We are thinking about switching to something else (currently looking
at Freshdesk) as the service is getting disproportionally expensive with many
users.

~~~
scosman
[EDIT] I intended to make this comment about Desk.com, not Zendesk. Sorry! I
can't speak to Zendesk, it might be amazing.

[Original comment] Exporting your data when you leave is almost impossible.
You'll need to keep paying even after you leave to keep your ticket history.
I'd suggest moving sooner rather than later.

~~~
leesalminen
I came across this[0] yesterday on HN. Apparently they can migrate ticket
history, knowledge base, etc between Zendesk and Freshdesk.

[0] [https://www.help-desk-migration.com](https://www.help-desk-migration.com)

------
m_a_t_t_8_6
HelpSpot for HelpDesk [https://helpspot.com/](https://helpspot.com/) Discourse
for public discussion [https://www.discourse.org/](https://www.discourse.org/)

Both can be self-hosted or SaaS which provides some nice flexibility.

------
nwenzel
Front + Intercom which gives us an email-based help desk, in-app chat and
messaging, and a self-service FAQ help desk.

~~~
niel
Front + Intercom is the same combination we use. We're happy with Front's
Intercom integration.

We're still using Zendesk for Help Centre, but considering alternatives. Last
time I checked, Intercom's help centre product was still lacking some features
we needed, unfortunately.

I think a big opportunity for Front is to make it easier to source content
from different knowledge base systems (like Zendesk) to include snippets/links
in emails without leaving Front. Perhaps a search box that inserts linked
titles for Help Centre articles.

------
nitai
Helpmonks ([https://helpmonks.com](https://helpmonks.com)) is being used by a
lot of startups. One of the main reasons is because the price is based on
mailbox(es) and not on users.

------
sixpenrose16
At [http://formbit.co](http://formbit.co), I use UserDeck. It has Guides
(knowledge base) and Mailboxes, which serves our purpose. I looked at some
other mentioned in this thread, but this works well for me.

------
pelmenept
Shameless plug. We built a Voice of the Customer tool -
[https://insightstash.com](https://insightstash.com) Collect feedback from
visitors directly on your site. Lots of features and customizations.

------
philippz
We're using our own service for customer feedback, crowdsourcing and also bug
tracking: [https://www.stomt.com/stomt](https://www.stomt.com/stomt)

------
minhajuddin
[https://liveformhq.com/](https://liveformhq.com/) uses Mixpanel for tracking
behavior to improve our product. We also used Zendesk for a while.

------
chasers
For customer communication... at AuthorityLabs we're using:

1) Intercom for chat and notifications

2) PagePilot (pagepilot.io) for the knowledgebase

3) G Suite for support@

4) Campaign Monitor for mass emails

Note: PagePilot is a new project of ours. Looking for beta testers :)

------
arbesfeld
At LogRocket we use

\- Intercom for chat / email

\- Readme for docs

\- ...LogRocket for issue reproduction

------
jwho82
Using Tidio Chat. Seems okay so far. -
[http://tidiochat.com](http://tidiochat.com)

Edit: Misread the question.

------
leesalminen
Gingr (gingrapp.com) uses Freshdesk for ticketing, live chat, and knowledge
base. Recently hit ticket #20000 and we are very happy with it.

------
screensquid
At ScreenSquid ([https://screensquid.com](https://screensquid.com)), we're
using:

\- Zoho Suite (CRM, Subscriptions, Books, Campaigns)

\- Loggly

\- Heroku

\- S3

\- Mixpanel Free

\- New Relic

\- Compose.io

\- Mandrill

~~~
BillFranklin
How do you find Zoho? I didn't know they offered recurring billing.

~~~
screensquid
It's awesome how the CRM, support, billing, campaigns, and accounting software
all works together. The price is great, because you're getting full featured
apps for only $60/seat.

However, the _way_ you connect the services is kinda janky, and I find myself
wishing for more modern features sometimes. There's also competing products
within the same ecosystem (social, email campaigns, and now recurring
billing).

The support is great and it's been great to start. I can see us growing out of
it but it's doing the job for now.

------
nutanc
Zendesk for email

Intercom for chat

And we dogfood getkookoo for phone support

------
donmatito
Self-plug alert. At Smooz we use... Smooz
([https://www.smooz.io](https://www.smooz.io)) to open 800+ shared Slack
channels with each team who install the app in their Slack team. Obviously,
not everyone answers, but these conversation provide 1) incredible insights
into use case, unclear onboarding flow, etc 2) help convert prospects 3) help
retain users

------
jbrooksuk
Cachet and StyleCI use Helpscout.

We've had no real qualms with it.

------
janlukacs
Intercom for in-app chat and email messaging.

------
manoj_venkat92
Freshdesk at Gozoomo.

