HACKER Q&A
📣 hemmert

How do you professionalize/outsource customer service?


I'm running a printable escape room app, Escape Team (www.escape-team.com, HN hugged it do death when I posted it. But it is great to see that you're enjoying it!) – and it is scaling quickly.

I am at a point where I can't go on holiday without checking my email daily for customer support requests. That's great, but also I think I need to put in a system here that's better than my current one-man-show thing.

It's mainly people having trouble with a puzzle, with a voucher code they received as a gift, or other 'FAQ' things. Right now, this is a great driver for positive App Store reviews, as people like the responsive and prompt customer service, even if it's them forgetting to put the dashes into the voucher code. (I could even automate most of the things people inquire about, but I'd lose the source for positive App Store reviews!)

So I'm totally fine with giving them a human person to talk to, and I'll happily pay that person – but I'd like to hear your opinion on how to do that.

I'm thinking about

- hosting a ticket system on my servers

- renting a hosted ticket system

and forwarding my support@ email to that system, and then

- hiring a freelance customer service person on UpWork or Fiverr to work on those tickets

– and, of course, giving that person all the material they need.

I'd be very interested in your experiences with

- ticket systems (self-hosted or hosted, but these can easily get expensive?)

- customer service outsourcing (which feels very very awkward, I'm having trouble letting go here).

Any thoughts are welcome! Do you outsource customer service on your projects? Or do you check your mail daily even while on holiday? As you might guess from the time of the year I'm posting this and from the nature of a 'family activity' like Escape Team – it's especially acute over Christmas and New Year's...

Thank you! —Fabian

  👤 FlopV Accepted Answer ✓
As someone who runs an ecommerce brand, my experience is you should be working on the business, not in the business. All my customer service is ran by a hybrid internal and outsourced team.

You can use zendesk or a free zendesk alternative, or even shared email box or forwarded emails to a rep, depending on how simple the needs & tracking is.

There are call centers that can handle tickets and phone systems that run for about $10 an hour per seat.

You could also find a customer service rep on Upwork. I've found great hires there. I'd mention that you need someone that can speak on the phone which will filter out anyone who doesn't have great English communication skills.

Another place to look for talent is VAs for real estate on Facebook groups. Not sure why, but the niche seems to have great talent at CS.

👤 hemmert
(It would, for example, be great to have an app on my phone that I could use to oversee my new customer service employee responding to emails, without me having to go into my email. I'm avoiding mobile email to maintain my sanity, and I'd like to keep it that way.)