Ask HN: How do you deal with customer support requests? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with customer support requests?

5 pointsjaxn5 comments

We have a location-base iPhone game that has been growing rapidly since we made it free. However, with the growth comes an increase in support emails. Currently it is just two founders (one technical, one business). We both try to share the load, but it is difficult to not step on each other's toes.

Assuming that you had to have incoming requests come in to an email address, how do you handle them?

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Are you talking about keeping the emails sorted out, and remembering who answered what? For that I use Email Center Pro (http://www.emailcenterpro.com). If you have a catch-all email address like support@mycompany.com, you set it up to be checked by Email Center Pro, and you can assign incoming emails to specific users, and track followup. It shows threaded conversations with comments alongside, and you can save templates for common responses.

Don't offer email support to non-paying customers. Set up a forum for free users to help themselves. Jump in when you can, but don't spend all your time on it.

Assuming you are actually keeping up with the support requests, and you're just wanting to avoid both people replying to the same email, any random division will do - for example, one answers emails that come in midnight to noon, and the other noon to midnight. Don't over-engineer this - since only one of you is technical, there's no chance both of you will be fixing the same problem.

But definitely what chaosmachine said - you should be looking to set up a forum. If you are lucky enough to attract a "groupie" (you know, the super helpful enthusiastic user that is answering everybody's question), make sure you reward them (free invites, recognition, r0shirt, whatever makes sense).

Hire people? If it is growing rapidly yet you can't afford to hire someone to handle such a task, perhaps you need to revisit how to monetize it.

Thanks for these suggestions everyone!

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