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HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

blog.ycombinator.com

31–35 of 35 posts

Re: HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

#31
Assuming your approach to handling the 80% is very systematic and process-oriented than I suspect you are destined for success.

Having spent a couple years in enterprise support, I would guess that less than 20% of the workforce carried over 80% of the weight. This was my first experience working in a support organization, and at first I assumed it was due to unusually lacking management, but after meeting people in similar roles elsewhere I think it's par for the course.

Support seems to suffer from the Peter Principle[1] more than the other enterprise departments. The few competent people who were around me were almost always using the support role as a steppingstone to learn a new technology, with no long term plan to stick around, nor any desire for promotion within the organization.

Like many new hires, I starting identifying process issues that occupied a lot of time that should have been spent more efficiently. I even documented the issues and proposed changes to improve organizational efficiency to management, who said "good stuff, thanks" but then went on fighting fires instead of preventing them in the first place. These were very basic improvements easily understood by anyone with a technical mindset who spent a week or two observing our support process. A couple years later and I hear nearly identical ideas are finally being phased into the process. I take no credit, because the people with whom I shared the ideas have moved on.

This turned into a bit of a rant, but the gist of it is I see a huge opportunity for disruption of the customer support process for any company with regular case intake. For the sake of everyone who ever needs to obtain support, which is all of us, I hope your team succeeds!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Re: HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

#32

Assuming your approach to handling the 80% is very systematic and process-oriented than I suspect you are destined for success. Having spent a couple years in enterprise support, I would guess that less than 20% of the workforce carried over 80% of the weight. This was my first experience working in a support organization, and at first I assumed it was due to unusually lacking management, but after meeting people in…

I know exactly what you mean! I worked for Marriott in support for one of my first jobs and automated myself out of it in about 2 weeks so I could play games on company time. People call in, I push 1-10 and go back to playing while I make small talk on the phone until my scripts executed. :)

Re: HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

#33
post #13

Somewhat tangential to what you're doing here, but I was a Technical Lead at Support.com for 5 years. We did general support and malware-specific support but we also had contracts where we would troubleshoot a specific product or brand. We, like you intend to, had a large, distributed workforce. While the business development team there (along with their head of training, Mary Waltuch) are largely responsible for the…

Thanks for commenting - it’s good to get your take on things. We’d love to chat further if you’d like - ping us at hi@hioperator.com . A few quick thoughts though. We are committed to keeping support local - in this case in the US. We’re not trying to be the lowest cost option, nor are we trying to handle the long tail of customer support. We focus on 80/20. And there is plenty of 80 to be had, even at scale. There a…

I knew a few who worked at influx.com , similar story. This business is a race to the bottom , clients want it cheap or they can just do it in house otherwise

Re: HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We updated the website so it's a bit more clear. And for further clarification, your bill would probably be slightly higher than the minimum, but quite honestly, we wouldn't feel comfortable taking you on as a client for quite some time. As we grow and move downstream, we'll lower prices and expand our offering. It sounds like you're just downstream; nothing to get upset about. Just wait and eventually we'll make sen…

> It sounds like you're just downstream How would you know? You haven't asked me any questions at all? All you've done is make assumptions and then tell me you didn't want my business.

It's their way of keeping to their assumption there are loads of small businesses ready to pay the amount that will make them all rich.

Re: HiOperator (YC S16) Provides Customer Support as a Service

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We updated the website so it's a bit more clear. And for further clarification, your bill would probably be slightly higher than the minimum, but quite honestly, we wouldn't feel comfortable taking you on as a client for quite some time. As we grow and move downstream, we'll lower prices and expand our offering. It sounds like you're just downstream; nothing to get upset about. Just wait and eventually we'll make sen…

> It sounds like you're just downstream How would you know? You haven't asked me any questions at all? All you've done is make assumptions and then tell me you didn't want my business.

They haven't asked you questions, but you have shared information about your support usage patterns. So, I'd guess that they're still working with lighter loads and plan to go larger from there. They didn't say they didn't want your business for good.
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