Hi Markus, On 01/04/2010, at 6:35 AM, Markus Müller wrote:
> Inspired by a recent blog posting by Manton Reece ( > http://www.manton.org/2010/03/fast_customer_support.html ) I started thinking > of how I could improve customer support. > > I‚m curious, how are you handling support? Via a simple email inbox, do you > have some kind of email ticket system (I think fogbugs comes with one) or are > you using a web app like GetSatisfaction, TenderApp,∑? I've used a few different approaches over the last couple of years: Redmine, GetSatisfaction and finally TenderApp. I've settled on Tender for the following reasons: 1. The price compared to GetSatisfaction; 2. The ease of use and attractiveness of the site for my users; 3. The really nifty dashboard for managing incoming messages and requests. All of the major services seem to offer a trial period (which I took advantage of for Tender and ZenDesk over the last couple of months) - I'd suggest taking them up on that and see which one better fits your style of working. > Which leads me to my second question: How are you handling support when you > are on vacation? Do you make sure every hotel you stay in has WiFi or do you > hire a support person for the duration of your trip? I think that so long as you're up front about being unavailable with your users, you can afford to not answer email for a few days. This usually means an auto responder and a blog post for me. If it's more than that, I generally tend to find some wifi and spend an hour answering the really important emails while I'm away - in my opinion, that's the price of being your own boss. Some people seem to abhor support, but I really enjoy talking to my users (even when they're rude as hell - that's just a challenge) - maybe that makes it easier? thanks, Tony ---------- Tony Arnold http://thecocoabots.com/
