Ask HN: Solo founders(Multiple projects)- How are you handling customer support?

2 points by saradhi 3y ago ↗ HN

Hi there,

I have a 8-5 job that needs constant attention and I maintain a couple of services on the internet. I'm curious to know how, someone like me, is handling the customer support.

I receive an average of 15-20 user emails per day, 70% of them asking for the same information on the website FAQs. I reply to them with the templated responses. Is there a reliable tool to automate responses for such emails based on the questions? The remaining 30% are generic questions related to the provided service and some involve updating the subscriptions.

1 comment

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zkirill 3y ago ↗

We discovered that we were encouraging bad behaviour by providing exceptional customer support for many years. Despite us building a support portal and automating most of the tasks that customers asked us to do, users found that it was easier to just email us instead of searching for an answer or completing a form. This was unsustainable given our business model and pricing structure. As a result, we had to cut down on customer support which lead to a few unhappy customers, and serious bounce back of focus and productivity across the entire team.