UserVoice launches Helpdesk We want to be the only customer facing tool you need | Hacker News Reader

UserVoice launches Helpdesk We want to be the only customer facing tool you need

blog.uservoice.com

72 pointsrrwhite32 comments

As someone who (a) has tried most help desk services and (b) owns a company that has a really strong reputation for good customer support, I've come to the following conclusions:

1. No tool/service has every feature we need and we always end up compromising somewhere.

2. I personally think most of them are over-priced, especially for new/small startups.

We used an in-house Rails app for support for a long time (it's open-sourced here: https://github.com/bigfolio/big-help/) and now we use ZenDesk. This tool looks cool but they all sort of lock you in because my support staff doesn't feel like re-writing/pasting FAQs, canned responses, etc.

Overall, I just feel like this is a weird space that has no clear winner. I don't see anything compelling with UserVoice that would get me to switch. I think there's clearly room for a competitor with better pricing though. I almost feel like this is an ideal space for a good open-source project (so firms can customize and deploy) that has a commercial hosting side (ala WordPress).

Getting data into and out of applications is a big issue in the era of SaaS. We've built data export into every single (non-free) plan we have (Though clearly there is a data translation issue. Anyone want to setup a company that helps you move your data between services for a cut of the service providers fees because I'd totally pay for that).

We've focused on doing less but doing it really well. We already had a lot of startups using us for feedback and using email for support. For $5/mo they can now get both. We hope that's workable for the 2 guys and a dog eating ramen crowd and if not we're open to feedback.

What really hooked me on programming is when I wrote what later became the Enterprise Knowledge Base of a Fortune 50 company. I was working on their help desk at the time, and the existing knowledge tools sucked, and had HUGE gaps between them.

I wrote something new, and specifically tailored to their process. This was over 10 years ago, and they still use it to this day, and have established a team of people to support it. I'll spare you the feature set (of which I'm quite proud), but the main thing that made it so intrinsic to their process was that it was written FOR their process. It was completely bespoke. It interfaced with their particular phone systems, their calendaring, their ticket tracking system, etc.

It was truly an enterprise-class tool, but for the fact that there weren't any layers of abstraction. The abstraction you usually have to put in to support a variety of databases, or a variety of phone systems, or a variety of calendaring tools because, the market for enterprise customers with MS-SQL + Avaya phone servers + Lotus Domino calendaring is crazy small.

Had it been re-engineered to work for all those systems, then it would truly have sucked. That is, I think the problem with tools like this -- you either conform to the process of the tool, or conform the tool to your process, and it's really hard to get right and stay lean. Maybe impossible.

It turns out the pricing for this full service product isn't directly under the "Pricing" button at the top, but under the Pricing button under the prices on the Pricing page.

So, the prices for the full service product definitely seem a lot lower than the "Feedback" product.

We just spent the last half hour hurriedly changing our marketing site nav based on feedback :)

The prices are lower because their per admin. One of our goals wast to make the entry level price points more accessible.

I would love to use this but these are some serious issues:

1) All packages should have SSL. I don't do business with companies that think security is an optional feature.

2) Single sign-on should be available for all packages. I am not interested in a walled garden approach for my app's support.

3) I don't care about white labeling, but a custom design is extremely important to me. Support is too important for our growth to just throw our brand out the window. Any support system needs to be contained in my website's frame.

That said the app looks really nice. A demo would go a long way to giving me a sense of the user's experience because as it is I don't know what 1/2 of the features are and how they are accessed.

I especially agree with point 3: white labeling is not so important. but being able to choose from some designs, or letting me provide my own seems important. And having it say "User Voice" with the logo is either a non-issue, or is a plus for users (who might be familiar with User Voice and appreciate that you're taking user support seriously)

I'd like to think it's the latter. At least that's the goal. I'm pretty sure you get better experience from companies that take the time to engage their customers with something like us.

You can actually customize your design (see http://foodily.uservoice.com/) of your site and also your widget (including the text and colors you want to have on the tab).

Thanks for the feedback:

1) The entire admin experience is SSL only. Our pricing grid references SSL but that's primarily for private communities (our widgets all support SSL environments)

2) We'd love to get SSO in the hands of as many people as possible but the support costs on it are quite high. I'm happy to work with people on this point.

3) We have design customization (check out http://foodily.uservoice.com/) and more is on the way.

We put a bunch of videos on http://uservoice.com/fullservice did you see those? Or were you looking for a demo of a live account?

I saw the videos, but they weren't very good and didn't give me any sense of how the app worked.

2)If SSO isn't an option due to support costs then how about having no user registration at all. I don't see any reason why people should be able to sign into a support site.

3) I know you have design customization, I am just not willing to pay the price for it. I think it should be standard with all accounts.

That said the foodily example is quite nice, but the navigation is hurting my head. I am getting lost rather easily.

1) Yeah we're working on more in-depth workflow videos and a live demo.

2) It's for giving feedback on your product. We don't force people to signin but we do ask them for a name and email (like blog comments). It's so that you can follow up with those people when you launch that new feature or fix their issue.

3) Design customization is on all accounts (like what Foodily used). Full HTML/CSS customization is currently only on the highest plans.

This is great feedback on where we're creating confusion. I appreciate you taking the time.

I also would like to emphasize the value of a demo. Feature lists and videos do not let me control the experience and get the answer to my questions as quickly. Also, make sure to put it at the top, in the same bar as your logo.

Many times, I have bought a service over another because of the speed at which I can see exactly what I get. I want land on your page and be able to see demo, right off, and immediately see the concept, design, and layout. No ready, watchy, or thinky, just clicky.

Hey Lost,

HN won't let me reply directly to your latest reply. Weird.

This is great feedback, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to act on it. Here are some options:

1. Point to a user-facing demo (like http://feedback.uservoice.com) 2. Point to an admin-side demo where you can play with fake tickets 3. Offer a 30-day free trial (which we do, but it may not be easy to find)

Which would be best for you?

-Evan Hamilton Community Manager, UserVoice

Why are the SSO support costs high? I implemented the SSO for ZenDesk by myself in about 1 hour. Maybe your design could use improvement?

The only problem I have with ZenDesk & SSO is that you cannot merge user accounts with SSO enabled. It causes a huge problem b/c customers use multiple email addresses and we end up with 3-4+ accounts for a single real customer.

They're not high for most people. They're high for a small subset of people that don't know what they're doing as soon as they read "JSON" :)

These are all really great points. It looks like #1 has been addressed, but #2 and #3 are definitely huge problems that I wish weren't so common :/ Hopefully UserVoice considers it.

We take all feedback very seriously. Pricing and plans is something we're always iterating on.

We really don't think there's a better customer-facing product out there for other startups like ourselves. It's feedback, support tickets and FAQs all in one package. We've been building this over the last 9 months and I'm super excited to actually have it launch. I'm most proud of the UX but I'd love to have your feedback.

The user interface in the admin panel looks very nice, I like it! I was also pleasantly surprised by the pricing.

That was the first piece of UI we built as it was the part that made us gouge our eyes out in all other solutions we tried :)

I agree this looks miles ahead of the competitors, the admin panel is superb.

The most usable client for feedback, knowledge base and support that I have ever seen and my clients will be super happy.

I think this is a smart move. Zendesk already figured out that Uservoice alike "feature request management" is a must in a help desk system and they added this feature to Zendesk couple of months ago.

We were using Uservoice and Zendesk, ditched Uservoice as soon as Zendesk started to provide a similar feature to avoid having 2 systems.

Edit: Pricing is unusually low for Zendesk, I assume they'll increase that later on.

Yep. I've heard that story before. We'd love to have you back if you'd have us :)

Let me know if there's anythng I can do to make that happen (rich AT uservoice)

BTW I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that their "feeback forums" are a far cry from our feedback solution.

And we added ZenDesk even though we use UserVoice! But it is a problem because we get people asking support questions on UserVoice. It would be nice to have one system; we would consider switching as well if UV FS turns out to be nice. I'll give it a few months to bake though :)

You should try us out now! We've been using this system for all our own support for many many months and we've had 40 beta testers banging on it. Plus we have a 30-day free trial so you can play around. :)

I found the pricing part of the site confusing. I clicked on "Plans & Pricing" expecting to see the new services pricing but it was just for the main UserVoice product.

It took me a while to realize you have to click "Start Free Trial" to see the pricing.

Not a great UX.

The marketing site certainly could use some work. It is a bit confusing.

Plans for Full Service are here: http://uservoice.com/fullservice/plans

Signed up for a demo just so I could mess around with the UI a bit. Great design! Looks very nice and seems easy to use. Nice work, guys.

how do I upgrade my existing account? when I try to sign up, it wants me to create brand new account. there is nothing in admin panel that offers me to upgrade, am I missing something?

Hey Lubos,

We definitely need to add something to the Admin Console about this. On the to-do list. :)

You can upgrade by:

1. Signing in to the Admin Console 2. Going to Settings 3. Scrolling down and clicking “Change plan” 4. Clicking the “Full Service” tab 5. Choosing the plan that fits you and hitting the “Change” button

Let me know if you have any issues/questions!

Finally... I heard they were working on this 6 months ago. I don't like and won't use Get Satisfaction (confusing, terribly designed widget, and extortionate business model) and have been waiting for a good solution. I haven't looked at this yet but have high hopes.

You're correct. We're very bad about being stealthy. We have high hopes as well so if they're not met do let me know :)

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