building a better human helper
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Help desk software is ugly utilitarian stuff. It’s designed to collect data, to manage, to organize, to control. Formal help desks have a lot of demands placed on them as they sit at the center of the organization, between the customers and management. In turn, help desk software tends to be sophisticated and complicated. Designed to perform the functions of what should really be done by 4, 5 or 6 separate applications.
While this creates a complex application, within the structure of a formal help desk it can and does work. Especially with applications that find the right balance (see HelpSpot).
Help desk apps are some of the oldest B2B software applications and have in many ways remained unchanged in concept. But what has changed is the world business is conducted in. Customer service is no longer the job of just a chosen few in the organization. The rise of email and social media as primary contact points means it (should be) easier to include the people with the proper knowledge in the support loop.
Beyond traditional corporate scenarios, the ability of customers to email you or post a private message to your Facebook page has forced customer service upon all types of organizations and the people in them. These accidental agents are often left either unequipped for the task or over equipped with the large heavy tools mentioned above.
This next generation of customer service worker can’t be weighed down by the customer service legacy driving most help desk applications. They don’t need infinite custom fields, complex self service portals, layers and layers of IT type tools such as password resetting for your Active Directory server.
Rather they need a tool that does exactly what they need it to do and nothing more. That connects to other tools and systems seamlessly to extend functionality when needed. One that empowers them to work faster and get back to the other work that inspires them.
Years of creating and supporting a more traditional help desk application has given us a lot of insight into the needs of this new wave of workers. We see the pain they go through in trying to squish themselves into the old model. So we decided to build something new, just for them. That meets their needs and the needs of any organization that wants a simpler, more flexible, more efficient, more affordable help desk experience without a lot of overhead.
Introducing Snappy
Our solution is a tool designed from the ground up to exclusively support email and Facebook Pages. It doesn’t do the other “stuff". it doesn’t have loads of settings, it doesn’t need any configuration at all. Sign up and 30 seconds later you’re answering customer support email faster than ever.
The unique design allows you to see many different tickets at the same time so it’s easy to stay on top of everything without any digging. Nothing falls through the cracks. And since we put the emphasis on waiting tickets, it’s always clear what needs responding to. No more overwhelming lists of tickets or uncertainty about what’s been answered and what hasn’t.
An area all but ignored by other tools is team communication. Snappy’s one-of-a-kind Team Wall provides a unified location to discuss problems, information and even just brag about that customer who sent in an over the top thank you email.
There’s a lot more to share over the coming months, but here’s a few screenshots to give you some idea where we’re headed.
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I know so many of you have followed the path of UserScape for the past 7 years with HelpSpot and I’m really excited to have you along on this journey. Snappy is a huge new challenge, but we believe it’s going to empower thousands of people in ways simply not possible with the current generation of tools and raise the bar for the next generation of help desk applications.
If you’re interested in seeing where we go, please sign up for our mailing list at http://www.besnappy.com.
Have a question/comment? Catch us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ianlandsman and http://www.twitter.com/besnappy