I’m happy to see this launch, Andrei! You all have dedicated so many years to working on chat for business. I’m excited to see this out there, and watch this next chapter in your story unfold!
Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#12I’m happy to see this launch, Andrei! You all have dedicated so many years to working on chat for business. I’m excited to see this out there, and watch this next chapter in your story unfold!
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Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#13Andrei and team are awesome. We were customers of a Fogbender ancestor (a chat app that became SameRoom) and are excited to be customers for Fogbender! For a growing customer success org, being able to generate tickets from these chats is super useful.
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Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#14Funny because we (B2B SAAS company) literally built an in house tool to manage customers at a "Company" level rather than Contacts/Users. However we decided to switch to Helpscout as we didn't wanna self host and it has been a bad experience with helpscout. They have no concept of "Company" and we are honestly considering switching back to our home grown tool. There definitely is need for tool like this. I will be ha…
HelpScout is a super competent team inbox solution, but yes - it's simply not designed for supporting an entire company. We would love for you to beta test! You can kick the tires by signing up and inviting a few colleagues (ping us in support to see what it feels like), or I can walk you through a demo.
Thanks for replying. I will test it out and let you know. I would also encourage to really "disrupt" (Yes I used the word here) pricing for support tools. Per agent/user pricing (zendesk/freshdesk/helpscout etc) really adds up for a startup/smaller teams and I would encourage you to consider flat rate pricing with limits of different types.
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
HelpScout is a super competent team inbox solution, but yes - it's simply not designed for supporting an entire company. We would love for you to beta test! You can kick the tires by signing up and inviting a few colleagues (ping us in support to see what it feels like), or I can walk you through a demo.
Thanks for replying. I will test it out and let you know. I would also encourage to really "disrupt" (Yes I used the word here) pricing for support tools. Per agent/user pricing (zendesk/freshdesk/helpscout etc) really adds up for a startup/smaller teams and I would encourage you to consider flat rate pricing with limits of different types.
I know what you mean. We're doing a few things in terms of pricing that (I think) are unusual for support tools:
- Unlimited read access to everyone at your company (because customer support conversations should be accessible to all team members). Say you have 15 people, but only 3 are customer-facing certified - if we charged $15/month, it would be $45/month for 15 people. (This also means unlimited write access in internal rooms - think of it as free Slack;)
- No charge for two customer-facing agents, which would cover most bootstrapped or pre-seed startups;
- Off-the-bat SSO; not a part of enterprise plan.
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#16Funny because we (B2B SAAS company) literally built an in house tool to manage customers at a "Company" level rather than Contacts/Users. However we decided to switch to Helpscout as we didn't wanna self host and it has been a bad experience with helpscout. They have no concept of "Company" and we are honestly considering switching back to our home grown tool. There definitely is need for tool like this. I will be ha…
we’re B2C and whilst I love helpscout, they seem to have stopped innovating or caring about solving some pain points (in our case multi-language support). I can kinda understand most of the time, but some things just feel a bit too tight fisted to me… They still seem to be better than zendesk and intercom, but I really wish they would push the envelope a bit more…
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for replying. I will test it out and let you know. I would also encourage to really "disrupt" (Yes I used the word here) pricing for support tools. Per agent/user pricing (zendesk/freshdesk/helpscout etc) really adds up for a startup/smaller teams and I would encourage you to consider flat rate pricing with limits of different types.
I know what you mean. We're doing a few things in terms of pricing that (I think) are unusual for support tools: - Unlimited read access to everyone at your company (because customer support conversations should be accessible to all team members). Say you have 15 people, but only 3 are customer-facing certified - if we charged $15/month, it would be $45/month for 15 people. (This also means unlimited write access in…
Nice. 1st and 3rd points are gold. I would say that for read only, at least allow internal team members to comment/note on customer issues and consider that read only as well. That way, we can have more team members be involved in internal notes etc for a customer but only charge if we are replying ? Or may be add role for agents as "commenter vs customer facing" . We ourselves offer SSO with our lower plans and that is very popular. The whole old school model of "SSO only available with Enterprise" needs to die soon.
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#18> B2C support tools don’t work for B2B
yes this -- so many build-vs-buy decisions that end up at 'build' because the market doesn't provide multitenant products
b2b2b / b2b2c is a bet on a software future of many mini platforms
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know what you mean. We're doing a few things in terms of pricing that (I think) are unusual for support tools: - Unlimited read access to everyone at your company (because customer support conversations should be accessible to all team members). Say you have 15 people, but only 3 are customer-facing certified - if we charged $15/month, it would be $45/month for 15 people. (This also means unlimited write access in…
Nice. 1st and 3rd points are gold. I would say that for read only, at least allow internal team members to comment/note on customer issues and consider that read only as well. That way, we can have more team members be involved in internal notes etc for a customer but only charge if we are replying ? Or may be add role for agents as "commenter vs customer facing" . We ourselves offer SSO with our lower plans and that…
Yes, totally agree on the SSO part.
The whole reader/writer part is pretty confusing. I made a brief video that explains a possible workflow: https://www.loom.com/share/7f644774c3114e65b779d13d1c6eda18
Re: Launch HN: Fogbender (YC W22) – B2B support software designed for customer teams
#20I recorded a brief video showing how the product works - https://www.loom.com/share/da9861a4526b424f90a08e54aa6e5fea
(Pretending that Stripe is using Fogbender for customer support)