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Comment by thelastparadise | Hacker News Reader

I operate a 4fig/month micro SaaS.

We use a chat bot because we simply do not have the support staff to answer your questions.

So you get the bot --it's either that or nothing.

But what we do do, is monitor the bot logs. If a function is missing from the product or website, we add it so that future users can fully self-service.

It's important to note, users are free to cancel their account at any time and/or get a refund.

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>So you get the bot --it's either that or nothing

Surely if there is truly a bug or an unexpected system behavior (double billed, etc) you would have someone work with the customer? This is one of the biggest pain points for using Google products.

I would use a public bugtracker and a separate email for customer/billing issues. But those are easy to resolve and if you setup is solid there should not be too many issues.

If people turn to the chatbot to ask "how to use the product" questions, it’s a sign your docs are unhelpful and do not provide useful answers. You do need support staff to help with questions specific to a situation, like how to resolve unexpected errors, or to handle billing disputes.

Or it’s a sign they didn’t try to read the docs.

Also, in a few years when done right I actually suspect people will start expecting and preferring bots to reading docs. I’m still pissed when I get connected to a bot but I think they’ll soon get good enough.

Not necessarily. Some people just prefer the chat interface over pouring over docs.

With ChatGPT, you can ask it to give you a working example for exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Often, you can get this kind of information from docs themselves, but it might involve reading a lot of text and tinkering. You can just press 'fast forward' and get straight to the working solution.

There's no reason to not have a chat bot at this point, other than cost.

People don't read the docs. It is a tiny minority that will read the docs and the bot trained on your documentation does provide helpful answers based on your documentation. If the bot answers are unhelpful, but then also the people reading wont get helpful answers from your docs - then you need to improve the documentation. These are two separate problems.

What are you using for a chatbot? I have been using drift but that is more just always on support. It is draining

I have some questions about building a Saas. Do you have an email to reach out to? Thanks!

Try their support chat

good one!

What bot do you use?

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