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HN, we're launching a support desk software next week. Help us with our plans?

20 points by markbao ↗ HN
Hey Hacker News,

Me (Mark) and Logan (lleger) have been working on a support/helpdesk app for a few months. It's called Supportbreeze. We're tech launching it next week, and we're trying to figure out our plans. Screenshot: http://cl.ly/5330f74a6d3af9bbb010

The biggest question is whether we want to limit accounts based on users or threads per month. And we have a few other questions that we're not sure about.

Care to throw your thoughts into our survey?

—> http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHJZQ0ZnWkZrMUlLcGJEcVNUZmQ3cEE6MQ

Oh, and you can try out our site right now. http://supportbreeze.com - we have Javascript/REST/PHP/Ruby APIs, a sweet feature called metadata that attaches, well, metadata to a request (like user ID, etc.), knowledge base, canned responses, custom CSS, and more.

Thank you!

30 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 73.3 ms ] thread
dpcan
How about just measure it by bandwidth usage or cpu cycles instead. Like "cloud-based" support software. Your name works perfectly with the "cloud" concept too.

Make the bandwidth limits high enough that smaller organizations will never have a problem, but then low enough that you don't have to worry about it being abused by a large corp.

Then make it $14 per month :)

markbao
That's an interesting idea, though I don't know if it would be the best or easiest way to structure it. Thanks, though!
petervandijck
Don't do it by threads (then I'll be charged by how helpful I am to my users), do it by support users (ie. admins), then I'm charged on amount of employees and it's just a small extra cost per employee.
markbao
That's what I'm leaning towards, too. The best user experience is not having to watch your back in terms of how many threads you've used this month, so I think it's better to do it by users.

I think we're going to have to limit free plans, though.

petervandijck
Don't limit free plans by threads. It's much better to limit them by, for example, not allowing customization, showing a big "powered by you" button, adding a footnote (powered by) in each email, stuff like that. Make me pay 9.99$/m if I want to look "professional" and not using a free service. Make me pay $29,99 for unlimited support accounts or something.
markbao
Not a bad idea — one of the things we wanted to limit to higher accounts was whitelabeling. Re: no free plan: I don't know if this would work - won't people want to try it longer, and wouldn't a free plan work towards our favor in word-of-mouth?
petervandijck
Or even better, don't have free plans, have free trials. 30 day free trial, then 9.99$/m The non-payers will leave after 30 days, which is fine.
Xipe
Switching support software isn't gratis, 30 days free trial may make people look at it half-heartedly, but not really try to integrate it.
jackowayed
I'm not in the market for helpdesk software at the moment, but I think if I were looking at it, I'd be very wary of using something that limited me by threads.

Threads are something out of your users' control. Which means they might be forced into upgrading (or losing use of their helpdesk for the rest of the month), which would not please them.

markbao
+1 on that. I don't think telling people "pay you can't use this software for 15 more days" is going to convert well for us for the next month. Thank you.
petervandijck
- "Get started for free" button is too low, and visually looks like it's in the page footer.

- The three screenshots with text aren't very clear, they don't explain much. FOr the first, show a support entry form, for the second, zoom out the screen further, for the third, .. you know what, why not dump the screenshots and show 1 screenshot instead showing the admin ui (the second screenshot basically)

markbao
Ah, good to know. I've been told the screenshots are pretty useless. I'll cook up an updated UI for that page that explains things a little better. (And we now have a lot more features that aren't covered.) Thank you!
notyourwork
Not to rain on your parade but I would suggest taking a look at: service-now.com it seems that this software is very comparable to yours and would be a good competitor to look into.
markbao
Thanks! We're always on the lookout for competitors, so this is great to know. Thank you.
mdisraeli
Do you mean http://www.service-now.com/ ?

If so, I really can't see how you see any connection, unless you simply mean web based and for IT service support.

SupportBreeze is clearly aimed at the small business with a handful of service desk staff, that takes the majority of it's calls by email or the web. Service-now, on the other hand, attempts to be an ITIL-supporting IT Service lifecycle management suite.

forkqueue
We're currently using entp's tenderapp, and I'm not particularly impressed so I'll definitely be giving you a try.

Some of the problems we've had with tenderapp:

  * Customer's emails getting flagged as spam even though spam checking was supposed to be disabled
  * Customer's email just 'vanishing' (I've been unable to verify this one, on account of there being no traces of the emails whatsoever)
  * Attachments not working
  * Attachments taking forever to be acceessible when they are working
I think a per support staff user charge is a good idea - it's simple and straightforward.
markbao
Thanks! We're working on getting attachments working by next week. I've heard that others have problems with Tender too — hopefully we'll be able to fix those.
momoro
The browser in that screenshot looks like a sexier version of Chrome, and there are a bunch of plugins on the right.

What release of Chrome is that, and what plugins are those?

markbao
Latest Mac dev, 6.0.472.25 dev - with Don't Break the Chain, Concentrate, website screenshot thing, Evernote, and User-Agent spoofer (which doesn't work.)
hm2k
We made a decision to use an email platform and abandon a helpdesk solution in order for us to respond to issues quicker and more efficiently, which provided our customers with a better customer service.
markbao
Which helpdesk did you use that didn't really work out?
hm2k
It's no secret that I developed eTicket until 2008.

I weighed up the pros and cons of using IMAP and email client(s) over a helpdesk system.

mdisraeli
I'd be interested in hearing more about your reasoning!
gills
"Tour" and "Pricing" links on the landing page lead to the default Rails 404 page. Consider putting some placeholder here, or something ala "[sign up for the beta], paid plans will be available soon." The tour page could just be a couple screenshots to start, just get rid of the 404.
markbao
Ah, yeah, aware. Should have put something up. Thanks!
mattmanser
It's looking very nice, clean UI.

Here's my feedback, I used to run a dev team who also handled firstline support.

BTW, I found it very confusing on how to log a support call to play around when I first signed up. Obviously the tour's not working but it's certainly not obvious at first glance.

If I were in the market, these would be show stoppers at the moment for me:

I should not have to refresh the page to find out if there any new calls. It should poll for new calls and new responses on the dashboard. Using chrome, could be bug.

I need to know the number of threads where I wasn't the last person to respond, the total open calls is not so important. Logically those are the ones I need to take action on asap as the client is awaiting a response. It's still very important as an indicator for 'action needed!'. I know from experience that support staff will respond immediately with a bullshit 'thanks, I'm looking into it' if you incentivise on this metric. Then again I think incentives are bs.

Visually it is very hard at a glance to see how long a call has been open for or when it was logged. For simple inhouse targets/performance this is important. For SLAs even more important.

No attachments like screengrabs?

Some other issues/feature requests:

How do I as a support person log a call from a client? There doesn't seem to be an ability to log a call on behalf of a client phoning in. (unless you log it with a different unauthenticated browser)

It is visually hard to distinguish between my responses and the clients. The faded blue bar is not working as a good visual clue, it only shows the start of my response, the clients next response flows into it too easily.

I would need to be able to classify calls with my own categories (we had a load but I can remember bug, upgrade problem, config issue, training needed, client's a douche (worded more diplomatically). We wouldn't tell the client how it had been classified.

I will never need to see the total number of closed threads.

I may need to see the total I closed that month (as a target).

No admin report on how each support staff has done. No reports on calls per client, etc.

As a client entering a support call, when you tab into each box the cursor does not appear in the text box until you start typing. This is alien textbox behaviour. I'm an outlier as I touch type and didn't use the mouse, so not a major UX problem, just a bit odd. Certainly made me double-take. So many websites get it wrong in terms of moving focus to a useless 'what's this?' icon next to the textbox that I had automatically pressed tab again and then was in the wrong box.

Nowhere for client to put a phone number, sometimes it's just easier to phone to understand what's going on. Some companies may not want this though I guess.

Seeing the thread of a conversation and having to scroll all the way down to respond is a bit irritating. See how it works out in UX tests, but putting a reply box at the top as well could be useful (I found that 90% of the work on a support call was done outside of the support the system for an IT company). It depends if you're dealing with high vloume calls I guess.

Why does it have 'add your reply above the date line' in the email response sent to client? Seems a bit arbitrary. Do some email clients still put your response below the original emails?

Also signup was a little annoying as it didn't detect my timezone, I'm English dammit, not American. Also it incorrectly lists London's Timezone as GMT+0:00 when we're actually GMT+1:00 at the moment. Yes, pedantic ;)

I'm not in the market and I work in the software industry, so take all my feedback with a pinch of salt!

I wish you all the best! Looks like a solid product with a good design.