March 18, 2015 at 11:57Simple ticket system for customer support: open beta and launch history
Friends, hello everyone. Today I want to tell you the story of the Teamdesk.ru project , which turned 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 bootstraps. The project was deliberately launched at the very height of the crisis last December, when the dollar was under 70 rubles and the euro was over 100. Why did we choose this time, how we tested the project idea and what came of it read in this article.
By the way, now the project is at the stage of open beta testing. The feedback and feedback of the first users is very important to us, so for everyone who has time to register before March 31, 2015, all the functionality of the service will be free without restrictions 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 realized that the choice of a project idea and time to start is critical to the success of the business as a whole. For ourselves, we identified 5 main criteria:
1) The subject area should be familiar to us.
When I launched my first project, I radically changed the scope and subject area - I switched from consumer Internet to SaaS software business in the field of Customer Service. An understanding of a new sphere and subject area took a couple of years and a lot of energy. Therefore, we decided to work in an adjacent industry.
2) The business model of the project was to be successful and work in at least 3 different markets.
The analysis showed that there are more than 150 vendors of HelpDesk systems in the United States, and the leader in the SaaS field (Zendesk) 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. Now we observe and feel primarily intuitively. While there are no serious studies, 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 just about that.
4) The time should be suitable.
If all the strong western competitors in one day went up 2 times - what could be better! In addition, the introduction of amendments to Federal Law 152 on the storage of data of Russians in Russia severely limits the possibilities of foreign projects.
5) Well, of course, we must have a competitive advantage.
If there are 20 competitors and you make 21 of 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 lacked quite a while ago.
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 could to catch up with it. Is this true with Teamdesk? The next 3 months and the introduction of a paid tariff will show.
Intuition, market research, etc. - all this is good, but only numbers, and even correctly interpreted ones, do not lie. Several times I already did this - at first I created a project, and only then I watched how they would use it. This experience cost a pretty penny, so this time, in order to confirm or refute our speculation, we needed to test the idea.
We did not begin to reinvent the wheel; we simply made a promotional site 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, the so-called unique trading offers, which we wanted to cling to customers.
We chose Direct as the source of traffic and launched contextual advertising. About 5,000 rubles were spent on everything. Especially with the ads and the selection of keywords did not bathe, because the main thing is to get the first tolerable numbers and draw conclusions.
According to the test results received 349 clicks and 26 registrations. Thus, the conversion on the site amounted to 6% by mail and the cost of registering about 250 rubles. Despite the fact that we did not do any optimization - quite adequate results. Looking at these numbers, we decided to cut the product itself.
Everyone blows that the sooner you give your product to customers, the better. Here we decided not to reinvent the wheel, but to roll out the key functionality as early as possible. There was an idea not to program ourselves, but to agree with a good foreign vendor on the localization of their solutions with us, but in the light of recent events they made it clear that they were not interested in the Russian market and were not going to come here.
Actually, taking as a basis an excellent foreign product and carefully choosing those 20% of the key functionality that gives 80% of the benefit, we managed to roll out the first version in 2 months. The total budget amounted to 37,550 rubles.
The topics of Help Desk and Service Desk are far from new. But in my opinion, there are big changes in this class of software. If earlier the helpdesk was used mainly by the internal IT service to process applications from other employees or customers, all this worked according to the ITIL methodology, it was wildly complicated and expensive. Now, thousands of small and medium-sized companies are faced with the task of organizing online customer support in 2 clicks and 5 minutes. This is not done by ITIL specialists, but by ordinary people without special education.
You probably understand what I'm talking about, if you have an online store or an online service, you develop software or provide services related to the Internet. So we are trying so that in 5 minutes and mere pennies you can provide your customers with such support that you could only dream of before.
What is already ready:
Coming soon:
Friends, the project has its own blog , where we publish all the figures and openly talk about how and what we do. 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 at 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 of the first users is very important to us, so for everyone who has time to register before March 31, 2015, all the functionality of the service will be free without restrictions 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 right now?
Having almost 5 years of experience as the founder and head of the SaaS company, I realized that the choice of a project idea and time to start is critical to the success of the business as a whole. For ourselves, we identified 5 main criteria:
1) The subject area should be familiar to us.
When I launched my first project, I radically changed the scope and subject area - I switched from consumer Internet to SaaS software business in the field of Customer Service. An understanding of a new sphere and subject area took a couple of years and a lot of energy. Therefore, we decided to work in an adjacent industry.
2) The business model of the project was to be successful and work in at least 3 different markets.
The analysis showed that there are more than 150 vendors of HelpDesk systems in the United States, and the leader in the SaaS field (Zendesk) 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. Now we observe and feel primarily intuitively. While there are no serious studies, 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 just about that.
4) The time should be suitable.
If all the strong western competitors in one day went up 2 times - what could be better! In addition, the introduction of amendments to Federal Law 152 on the storage of data of Russians in Russia severely limits the possibilities of foreign projects.
5) Well, of course, we must have a competitive advantage.
If there are 20 competitors and you make 21 of 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 lacked quite a while ago.
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 could to catch up with it. Is this true with Teamdesk? The next 3 months and the introduction of a paid tariff will show.
How did you test ideas for 6,000 rubles and get a bonus in the form of a 6% conversion on the site?
Intuition, market research, etc. - all this is good, but only numbers, and even correctly interpreted ones, do not lie. Several times I already did this - at first I created a project, and only then I watched how they would use it. This experience cost a pretty penny, so this time, in order to confirm or refute our speculation, we needed to test the idea.
We did not begin to reinvent the wheel; we simply made a promotional site 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, the so-called unique trading offers, which we wanted to cling to customers.
We chose Direct as the source of traffic and launched contextual advertising. About 5,000 rubles were spent on everything. Especially with the ads and the selection of keywords did not bathe, because the main thing is to get the first tolerable numbers and draw conclusions.
According to the test results received 349 clicks and 26 registrations. Thus, the conversion on the site amounted to 6% by mail and the cost of registering about 250 rubles. Despite the fact that we did not do any optimization - quite adequate results. Looking at these numbers, we decided to cut the product itself.
The first version of the system in 2 months and 37 550 rubles.
Everyone blows that the sooner you give your product to customers, the better. Here we decided not to reinvent the wheel, but to roll out the key functionality as early as possible. There was an idea not to program ourselves, but to agree with a good foreign vendor on the localization of their solutions with us, but in the light of recent events they made it clear that they were not interested in the Russian market and were not going to come here.
Actually, taking as a basis an excellent foreign product and carefully choosing those 20% of the key functionality that gives 80% of the benefit, 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 topics of Help Desk and Service Desk are far from new. But in my opinion, there are big changes in this class of software. If earlier the helpdesk was used mainly by the internal IT service to process applications from other employees or customers, all this worked according to the ITIL methodology, it was wildly complicated and expensive. Now, thousands of small and medium-sized companies are faced with the task of organizing online customer support in 2 clicks and 5 minutes. This is not done by ITIL specialists, but by ordinary people without special education.
You probably understand what I'm talking about, if you have an online store or an online service, you develop software or provide services related to the Internet. So we are trying so that in 5 minutes and mere pennies you can provide your customers with such support that you could only dream of before.
What is already ready:
- Creating tickets from Email
- Several inboxes (inboxes)
- Ticket Statuses
- Ticket Removal
- Customer Contact History
- File attachment
- Mass actions
- Source phone (when manually creating a ticket)
- Answer Templates
- Email Notifications
- Ticket Filters
- RICH Editor
- Responsibility
- Private Ticket Notes
- Groups of users
- Ticket auto reply
Coming soon:
- Widget for site
- Knowledge base
- Telephony Connection
- Connection of social networks
- Analytics and reports
- And much more!
Friends, the project has its own blog , where we publish all the figures and openly talk about how and what we do. 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 at support@teamdesk.ru . Your opinion is important to us!