Simple ticket system for customer support: open beta and launch history
Hello friends. Today I want to tell you the story of the project Teamdesk.ru , which is 3 months old on March 10. This is a story about how to launch a startup with a budget of less than 50,000 rubles and serious bootstrapping. The project was intentionally launched at the height of the crisis in December last year, when the dollar was under 70 rubles, and the euro was over 100. Why we chose this time, how we tested the idea of ​​the project, and what came out of it in this article.
By the way, now the project is at the stage of open beta testing. The feedback and feedback from the first users are very important to us, so for all those who have time to register before March 31, 2015, the full functionality of the service without restrictions will be free until the end of the year. Further, a free tariff for 3 operators will also be available. But first things first, the details are under the cut.
')
Having almost 5 years of experience as the founder and head of the SaaS company, I understood that choosing the project idea and the time to start is critical for the success of the entire business. For ourselves, we have identified 5 main criteria:
1) The subject area should be familiar to us.
When I launched my first project, I radically changed the scope of activities and the subject area - I switched from the consumer Internet to the software SaaS business in the field of Customer Service. It took a couple of years and a lot of energy to understand the new sphere and the subject area. Therefore, we decided to work in the related industry.
2) The business model of the project had to be successful and work in at least 3 different markets.
The analysis showed that there are more than 150 HelpDesk systems vendors in the States alone, and the leader in the field of SaaS (the Zendesk company) last year launched an IPO with a capitalization of $ 1.6 billion.
3) The market for such systems in Russia and the CIS should grow. We are now seeing and feeling first and foremost intuitively. There is no serious research so far, but demand is in the air, because any online service, online store or online project needs to support its customers online simply and conveniently. Our help desk is about that.
4) Time must be suitable.
If all the strong Western competitors in one day went up in 2 times - what could be better! Moreover, the entry of amendments to the Federal Law 152 on the storage of data from Russians in Russia severely limits the possibilities of foreign projects.
5) And of course, we must have a competitive advantage.
If there are 20 competitors and you make 21 the same company with a similar product, business model and marketing, then you will not bite off a large piece of cake. Simple and understandable SaaS for adequate money - this is what our market did not have enough for a long time.
When the idea of ​​this project went through all 5 points, we decided to test it. For myself, I have long concluded that if your idea “hit the market”, then you would rather not push the project forward, but run as fast as you can in time for it. Is it so with Teamdesk - they will show the next 3 months and the introduction of a paid rate.
Intuition, market research, etc. - All this is good, but they do not lie only numbers, and yes even correctly interpreted. I did it several times already - first I created a project, and only then I looked at how it would be used. This experience cost a pretty penny, so this time, to confirm or deny our speculation, we had to test the idea.
We didn’t reinvent the wheel, just made a promotional website on a ready-made template, which we bought for only $ 12. The purpose of the site is to advertise the finished product: a simple and convenient HelpDesk for customer support. At the same time on the site, we tested the benefits of the so-called unique sales offers that we wanted to cling to customers.
We chose Direct as the source of traffic and launched contextual advertising. About 5,000 rubles was spent on everything. Especially with the ads and the selection of keywords are not steamed, because the main thing is to get the first tolerable numbers and draw conclusions.
According to the test results, 349 clicks and 26 registrations were received. Thus, the conversion on the site was 6% mail and the cost of attracting registration was about 250 rubles. With that, we didn’t do any optimization - quite adequate results. Looking at these numbers, we decided to cut the product itself.
Everyone trumpets that the sooner you give your customers the better product. We decided not to reinvent the wheel, but roll out the key functionality as soon as possible. There was an idea not even to program ourselves, but to agree with a good foreign vendor on the localization of their decision with us, but in the light of recent events they made it clear that they are not interested in the Russian market and they are not going to come here.
Actually, taking the excellent foreign product as a basis and carefully selecting those 20% of the key functionality, which gives 80% of the benefits, we managed to roll out the first version in 2 months. The total budget amounted to 37,550 rubles.
The topic Help Desk and Service Desk is far from new. But in my opinion in this class of software there are big changes now. If previously the helpdesk was mainly used by the internal IT service to process requests from other employees or customers, it all worked according to the ITIL methodology, it was wildly difficult and expensive. Now, thousands of companies from medium and small businesses face the challenge of organizing online customer support in 2 clicks and 5 minutes. This is not done by ITIL specialists, but by the most ordinary people without special education.
You probably understand what I am talking about, if you have an online store or online service, you are developing software or providing services tied to the Internet. So we are trying so that in 5 minutes and mere pennies you could provide your clients with such support that you could only dream of earlier.
What is ready:
Coming soon:
Friends, the project has its own blog , where we publish all the figures and openly tell how and what we are doing. Blog articles are published on Thursdays 2-3 times a month. Subscribe if the project seemed interesting to you.
PS Tell us how to make the project better. Registration at http://teamdesk.ru/register . Write your feedback and suggestions to support@teamdesk.ru . Your opinion is important to us!
By the way, now the project is at the stage of open beta testing. The feedback and feedback from the first users are very important to us, so for all those who have time to register before March 31, 2015, the full functionality of the service without restrictions will be free until the end of the year. Further, a free tariff for 3 operators will also be available. But first things first, the details are under the cut.
')
How did you choose the project idea and why did you decide to do it now?
Having almost 5 years of experience as the founder and head of the SaaS company, I understood that choosing the project idea and the time to start is critical for the success of the entire business. For ourselves, we have identified 5 main criteria:
1) The subject area should be familiar to us.
When I launched my first project, I radically changed the scope of activities and the subject area - I switched from the consumer Internet to the software SaaS business in the field of Customer Service. It took a couple of years and a lot of energy to understand the new sphere and the subject area. Therefore, we decided to work in the related industry.
2) The business model of the project had to be successful and work in at least 3 different markets.
The analysis showed that there are more than 150 HelpDesk systems vendors in the States alone, and the leader in the field of SaaS (the Zendesk company) last year launched an IPO with a capitalization of $ 1.6 billion.
3) The market for such systems in Russia and the CIS should grow. We are now seeing and feeling first and foremost intuitively. There is no serious research so far, but demand is in the air, because any online service, online store or online project needs to support its customers online simply and conveniently. Our help desk is about that.
4) Time must be suitable.
If all the strong Western competitors in one day went up in 2 times - what could be better! Moreover, the entry of amendments to the Federal Law 152 on the storage of data from Russians in Russia severely limits the possibilities of foreign projects.
5) And of course, we must have a competitive advantage.
If there are 20 competitors and you make 21 the same company with a similar product, business model and marketing, then you will not bite off a large piece of cake. Simple and understandable SaaS for adequate money - this is what our market did not have enough for a long time.
When the idea of ​​this project went through all 5 points, we decided to test it. For myself, I have long concluded that if your idea “hit the market”, then you would rather not push the project forward, but run as fast as you can in time for it. Is it so with Teamdesk - they will show the next 3 months and the introduction of a paid rate.
How did you test ideas for 6000 rubles and received a bonus in the form of a 6% conversion on the site?
Intuition, market research, etc. - All this is good, but they do not lie only numbers, and yes even correctly interpreted. I did it several times already - first I created a project, and only then I looked at how it would be used. This experience cost a pretty penny, so this time, to confirm or deny our speculation, we had to test the idea.
We didn’t reinvent the wheel, just made a promotional website on a ready-made template, which we bought for only $ 12. The purpose of the site is to advertise the finished product: a simple and convenient HelpDesk for customer support. At the same time on the site, we tested the benefits of the so-called unique sales offers that we wanted to cling to customers.
We chose Direct as the source of traffic and launched contextual advertising. About 5,000 rubles was spent on everything. Especially with the ads and the selection of keywords are not steamed, because the main thing is to get the first tolerable numbers and draw conclusions.
According to the test results, 349 clicks and 26 registrations were received. Thus, the conversion on the site was 6% mail and the cost of attracting registration was about 250 rubles. With that, we didn’t do any optimization - quite adequate results. Looking at these numbers, we decided to cut the product itself.
The first version of the system for 2 months and 37 550 rubles.
Everyone trumpets that the sooner you give your customers the better product. We decided not to reinvent the wheel, but roll out the key functionality as soon as possible. There was an idea not even to program ourselves, but to agree with a good foreign vendor on the localization of their decision with us, but in the light of recent events they made it clear that they are not interested in the Russian market and they are not going to come here.
Actually, taking the excellent foreign product as a basis and carefully selecting those 20% of the key functionality, which gives 80% of the benefits, we managed to roll out the first version in 2 months. The total budget amounted to 37,550 rubles.
Now a few words about the service itself.
The topic Help Desk and Service Desk is far from new. But in my opinion in this class of software there are big changes now. If previously the helpdesk was mainly used by the internal IT service to process requests from other employees or customers, it all worked according to the ITIL methodology, it was wildly difficult and expensive. Now, thousands of companies from medium and small businesses face the challenge of organizing online customer support in 2 clicks and 5 minutes. This is not done by ITIL specialists, but by the most ordinary people without special education.
You probably understand what I am talking about, if you have an online store or online service, you are developing software or providing services tied to the Internet. So we are trying so that in 5 minutes and mere pennies you could provide your clients with such support that you could only dream of earlier.
What is ready:
- Create tickets from Email
- Multiple inboxes (inboxes)
- Ticket statuses
- Deleting tickets
- Customer Case History
- Attaching Files
- Mass action
- Source phone (when manually creating a ticket)
- Response templates
- Email Notifications
- Filter by ticket
- Ric editor
- Assignment of responsibility
- Private Ticket Notes
- Group of users
- Auto-answer to tickets
Coming soon:
- Widget for the site
- Knowledge base
- Telephony connection
- Connecting social networks
- Analytics and reports
- And much more!
Friends, the project has its own blog , where we publish all the figures and openly tell how and what we are doing. Blog articles are published on Thursdays 2-3 times a month. Subscribe if the project seemed interesting to you.
PS Tell us how to make the project better. Registration at http://teamdesk.ru/register . Write your feedback and suggestions to support@teamdesk.ru . Your opinion is important to us!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/253379/
All Articles