Ask YC: best (multi-user) startup email support/helpdesk system?
What's the best email support/helpdesk system to use for our startup that lets more than one person process incoming email?
Currently we have an email alias support@ which simply sends to two of us (web feedback form submissions come this way too). When one of us replies then we BCC the other so they know not to reply too, but this is obviously a pain. Additionally if we reply from our personal address then the other person no longer receives future messages in the thread.
As well as solving these two problems, it'd be useful to bring some more of the team into the process so they at least can read the incoming support requests to get an idea of user feedback - this would quickly get out of hand with our current simple setup.
Any recommendations? Cheers!
19 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 58.6 ms ] threadThey have a free startup plan for two users, and free unlimited users for yc funded startups.
As mentioned, you can give it POP access to your support account and it will auto-respond to your customers (optionally) and also create a new "case" for you to track the issue. It makes it dead simple to follow a thread all the way through until it's resolved.
You can also see the history of previous cases opened by the same person which can be very helpful. FogBugz also includes a wiki to help share information internally, the same forum software that runs the BoS forums over on Joel's site, and some pretty cool project mgmt features that I personally don't use, but could see the value in if I had a bigger team.
I know not everyone drinks the Joel Kool-aid, but FogBugz is pretty slick. I'd say it's worth checking out, especially if you quality for their free plan for students/startups. http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/StudentAndStartup.html
There's also a whole list here: http://www.opensourcehelpdesklist.com/
Are you hosting this yourself or do you want someone else to host it?
Not sure if it's the right fit for you, but it's run by some friends of mine.
http://www.cerberusweb.com/
It's super-easy to use, too.
I use Cerberus myself. Once you figure out its quirks, it's pretty handy.
We've been using it for about 3 years and love it.
They have email gateway and a very flexible user rights management features. You could set up customers to email you issues which will automatically become tickets in your development project (which is accessible only for developers). You can also set up a wiki available only for customers.
Since you are (hopefully) already running issue tracker/version control environment for developers, you can thus avoid creating a redundant extra layer of 'support ticket' database and 'customer knowledge base' altogether.
Very robust and full of features.