Task.fm was bootstrapped.  This meant I didn’t have a huge amount of money to spend on expensive tools, software and infrastructure.   But that didn’t mean we had to skimp or go without.  This is a series of posts on the tools, software and tricks we used to save money but still maintain the same functionality of the big guys. Check out the previous post on Customer Support tools

Website Statistics – Clicky

Nope we don’t use Google Analytics.  And its for one very good reason – realtime.  Clicky is a realtime stats package which also keeps track of our Twitter followers and RSS subscribers.  But most importantly, if someone blogs about Task.fm I can see in realtime this happening and go out, visit the post and respond.

Clicky also has great goal and campaign tracking – which will come into play and be invaluable for us when we start doing more A/B testing.

Total Cost – $9.99 p/m (funnily enough, paid for enitrely by referring others to the service. So really $0 per month)

User Experience – CrazyEgg

You might think that small companies like us wouldn’t be able to measure how good the user experience is.  CrazyEgg does it for us.

It tracks where people click on a site – instantly telling us what people are seeing, but more importantly, how people use our app.  CrazyEgg isn’t turned on all the time, its only used to test new design iterations for the first few days.

Total Cost – $0 p/m

Other Stats

We also grab stats from mailchimp, our email newsletter tool.  We run spilt tests on 20% of the emails we send out, testing to see which subject lines achieve the best open rate.  Mailchimp also tells us how many people read our emails and what they click on.

Total Cost :

$9.99 p/m.  Pretty good.  The most important thing here is although these tools provide some pretty good hard data, actually listeing to the users and tracking their responses to new features is the most important thing for us.

Plus you will be able to do it, without being overwhelmed with information.

There are also plenty of tools which charge a small fortune to small businesses to corporations, that will do the same job as the free tools I have listed below (but perhaps with a prettier interface):

Step 1: Grab the Feeds

• Twitter Search – do a search for your product name on Twitter search and then grab the related rss feed.  For Task.fm I used the terms “task.fm”, “taskfm”, “task fm” and “www.task.fm”.
• Delicious – Do the same on Delicious.  The search terms should be your website’s title as this is what the links show up as.
• Google News – Do a search for you product and then save the RSS feed
• Google Blog Search – Do the same for Google news

Step 2: Import feeds into a FriendFeed Room

FriendFeed is a great way of aggregating a large stream of information.  Unlike an RSS reader, you won’t be overwhelmed by “unread items” and you can easily skip past unwanted items.

Create your own FriendFeed room just for tracking your product mentions.  Add all of the rss feeds to the room.  When something new comes in, it will show up in your feed.

I also have created a saved search on FriendFeed for the term “task.fm” – which I check all the time as it catches a lot of what my room misses (such as stumbleupon entries).

If your “mention” room is private like mine, you can leave comments or notes.  Great for letting others in your team know you’ve responded to a comment, or for leaving notes about the author.

Step 3: Google Alerts

FriendFeed still may miss some mentions.  So setup a Google Alert for your product name.  This will email you when Google indexes a new page related to your term.  Make sure you set the “as it happens” option so that you can respond right away.

Taking It Further

You can use this same method for not only tracking mentions of your product, but also for finding potential new leads.  For example, If you were mention “gtd” (getting things done) “to-do list app”, “sms reminders” etc. It will show up in a special FriendFeed room I created.  90% of the mentions of these terms I ignore, but there are a few which I will go out and actively respond to. btw. Responding doesn’t always mean plugging your product!

Photo Credit – Michael Marlatt

Task.fm was bootstrapped.  This meant I didn’t have a huge amount of money to spend on expensive tools, software and infrastructure.   But that didn’t mean we had to skimp or go without.  This is a series of posts on the tools, software and tricks we used to save money but still maintain the same functionality of the big guys.

Customer service doesn’t need to be expensive.  You could get by, using just email.  But in this day and age, especially running a software company it pays to be a bit more creative and offer users the best service experience possible.  Here is how to do it for just $19.

Customer Support Community – GetSatisfaction

GetSatisfaction is a relatively new concept based around the idea of “open customer support”.  So instead of communicating in closed channels such as email, you pull the curtain down and put your customer service in front of everybody.

Our GetSatisfaction community contains a combination of bug notifications and feature requests.  I personally respond to every request – even if its saying “we’re not planning on developing this”.

GetSatisfaction is a perfect fit for Task.fm.  If you’re looking for an alternative try UserVoice.

Total Cost – $0

Help Desk – Zendesk

GetSatisfaction isn’t suitable for people posting sensitive account issues (such as billing enquiries).  Therefore we needed a Help Desk.  ZenDesk is a really solid offering.  Although we respond to most emails directly, I can forward complex tasks to ZenDesk which automatically creates a ticket.

ZenDesk also supports forums – which for us isn’t really being used (Get Satisfaction) fulfills this need for us.

ZenDesk is beautifully designed, unlike many self hosted and open source options.  Which can make the difference between a bad and good customer service experience.

Total Cost – $19 per month

Email – Google Apps

Send an email to info@task.fm and it goes to a hosted Google Apps account.  Gmail does such a good job of managing conversations and search that their is literally no competitor or alternative in this space.

Complicated emails get forwarded to ZenDesk and the rest are answered right from gmail.  I also setup a catch-all address to make sure we get everything that comes our way

Total Cost – $0

Contact Form – Wufoo

This is something that I could of easily have custom coded this but it was easier to go with Wufoo. They off a click to create form builder and they handle all processing of forms.  What I would like, is to have a custom coded contact form which automatically creates a ticket on ZenDesk.

Total Cost – $0

FriendFeed

Some of the best conversations about Task.fm have happened on FriendFeed.  I have setup a room that posts all our blogs posts, Tweets and updates.  The room can also be used for support.

Thanks to saved searches – if someone is talking about Task.fm I see it.  If you ask a question I answer.

Lots of feature requests come from FriendFeed users and I respond to every single one.

Total Cost – $0

Twitter

Although FriendFeed catches most of the Twitter chatter about Task.fm, I still keep a profile there.   Again I respond to each and every question asked about Task.fm (if its meant to be answered).  I have setup custom searches of our company name and our unique features.

Total Cost – $0

What We Need to do Better – User Documentation

We need to create some good user documentation for Task.fm.  This will be done on ZenDesk – its really good for this.  Look at Twitters Zendesk for a good example of how  User Documentation can be done.  It doesn’t need to be boring!

In Conclusion

So how does this all work out for us.  Pretty Well.  The most common response I have been getting is “thanks for your quick response” which means I must be doing something right.

Total Cost – $19 per month.  Pretty good huh!  Of course we don’t employ anybody for just CS.  instead its handled by everybody on the team.

What does your startup use for Customer Support?