jteusa

TLDR: Launched 2.5 years ago, product market fit, 100+ pay customers / real revenue, bootstrapped, and have figured out a lot of the tech ourselves to get to this point but want to bring on a technology leader to drive to the next level together.

There's a 9 minute overview about the business and the role in the video above. Happy to answer any questions hre.

Funny sidenote - We shared how we got our first customers on HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8783791 in the early days. Fun to look back on that lol.

Solid summary

Thanks!

You typed the same thing I was typing at the same time = )

Shoulda been clearer - sorry.

The core process is how to hire on elance, with a live chat team as the example. It's applicable for any elance / odesk hire though.

THANKS HACKER NEWS!!!

Tons of great feedback received, summarized below:

- Explain the service better (i.e. we're not a chat software)

- Answer the main question directly (i.e. how can you possibly know enough detail of the business to answer visitor questions)

- Answer a few other basic questions (chat system included, 24 / 7, etc.)

Here's what I've done so far:

- Revised headline to (as of 12/24 am) "Website Chat Support, Done For You", and also sub headline- will tweak it a bit

- Added FAQ section to the page

- Revised testimonials (with approval of course) to speak more to the main question of "how can you know enough about my business?"

- Included REAL EXAMPLES of chat lots to show how this is working for a diverse group of clients

- (coming soon, recommended by a HNer that I can't find the name of in my logs - comment here for credit) I'll be testing the impact of changing entire focus of home from "here's what we do, it works, here's why, blah blah blah" to "Test Us Out on Your Site Right Now" using the preview feature that pops up our chat on your website right away (i.e. you're connected directly to me via chat). We got bombarded from HN traffic (yay!) but I think that could work REALLY well if I streamline it a bit (and make the feature looks better of course - hacked quickly).

In short, THANKS for all your feedback. I'm taking action as fast as I can (got quite a few customers, so building some backend stuff as we speak) and wanted to say thank you!

Happy holidays!

We use our own chat system. Very streamlined.

Totally understand.

Have a cool post coming soon re: great process for building a solid prospect list (sounds bland, but there's some magic to it).

Totally agree. Building up my startup solo at the moment, but on the lookout for a solid co founder.

Good question.

The value of what we do seems to be that we're available for the visitor, we do our best to help (fast response, personable, etc.), etc. And if we don't know the answer, we commit to getting them in touch with the right person on your team (i.e. a lead for you, and a happy visitor).

We do have a good onboarding process / workflow to make sure we know enough about the customers business to help visitors (see other HN comments in the thread), but the core value is that we're there, personable, and do our best to help.

Could definitely be done.

Right now, we don't escalate via live chat but instead connect them via email quickly.

The bulk of our customers don't seem to be using live chat now, so doing an escalation / transfer process via live chat could be a source of confusion and friction. For now, we'll stick to email connections (working well), but it's on my list.

Thanks Michael!

Great questions! Sorry for delay in responding (been hectic last 24 hours)

The value of what we do seems to be that we're available for the visitor, we do our best to help (fast response, personable, etc.), etc. And if we don't know the answer, we commit to getting them in touch with the right person on your team (i.e. a lead for you, and a happy visitor).

We go through a detailed on boarding process to get the info we need. We study the ins and outs of your site, and also ask questions as needed before starting the chat service.

If we don't know the answer to a question, we are honest with the visitor (visitors appreciate transparency rather than halfway answers - i.e. like a cox.net, ATT, Verizon, or other similar website chat team). We then offer to connect them with someone on your team via email to get an answer asap.

I know this sounds simplistic, but it's working well.

I'm going to put together a case study on the site, and possibly deeper blog post about tackling this part of the problem, as it's a THE QUESTION so far. If you want to check it out, drop your email on the site (there's a "follow our progress" button on the blog posts).

Thanks for the feedback!

Will check out the podcast and the book - Thanks for sharing!

Well said.

We're not doing helpareporter.com anymore for now (might later). The right publicity to the right market can work well, but this isn't focused enough for us yet. There's bottom of funnel work we can do better for now.

We got signups from the HN traffic. I totally understand that HN traffic doesn't covert in some cases - it's not been insane conversions for us, but it's working. That wasn't my goal from the post (I've never published to medium / haven't been active on HN), but cool surprise.

Love it! Will consider that. Thanks for the feedback (so many good tips from the HN visitors)

Updated - let me know what you think.

Yes, running myself for the moment - but on boarding a team member or two to help in the next few days (been preparing for that part as part of running it myself).

It's 730am PST to 9pm PST right now. Will be expanding shortly.

Totally agree. Got a ton of great feedback from HN community today via (LOTS of) website chats on the site = )

Thanks!

I think you might have mis-understood what we do. My fault (you're not the first).

In short, we're not a software company.

We manage the live chat for website, so they don't have to. We're a service business.

Thanks April.

We've got a solid process for managing chats for a diverse group of websites.

- We go through a detailed on boarding process to get the info we need. We study the ins and outs of your site, and also ask questions as needed before starting the chat service.

- If we don't know the answer to a question, we are honest with the visitor (visitors appreciate transparency rather than halfway answers). We then offer to connect them with someone on your team via email to get an answer asap.

As simple as this sounds, the attention and transparency goes a long way based on what we're seeing.

As far as scaling, we've got numbers around what it takes to manage a customer at various website traffic levels (prices are based on website visitors), so I've got an idea of how we'll scale for customers vs chat team.

Re #2

At first, they said (on a Friday) "we'll talk about it *next Monday" (which was almost two weeks).

I casually said "ok that's fine. For now though, let's take it off the site since we know it's working - that will give you guys some time to make the decision without any pressure."

They made the decision by Sunday, paid Monday, and we were back online quickly = )

It's ok to push, if you're providing value and it seems to be working

Thanks Jake.

Well said re: avoiding "trying to anticipate things that may never wind up being important".

Today is the "flying by the seat of your pants" day ha. I underestimated just trying out a post on medium. It's been great though.

Definitely! Getting to that first customer signup ASAP gives you a TON of motivation right out of the gate.

Thanks Darrin. Been fun so far.