I Built A Productized Service In 3 Weeks - Here's What I Did - Lessons Learned

So I finally launched a productized service which people said couldn't be done but of course I did it anyway.

The product/service is a done for you customer service chatbot for small businesses that answers customer questions in full conversation(not just point and click), and uses machine learning, files support tickets, takes contact info, transfers to a live human, offers discount codes, and drives sales.

Before I launched it, I had a full version running in real life for a real customer in order to understand how I could productized something that's pretty darn custom.

To be honest, the results we saw were pretty darn amazing: within two weeks his sales went up by approximately 2% due to the Bot suggesting the product and the right times, he didn't have to hire an additional staff member for customer support (saving him $2,200/month) and to top it off we were seeing the bot literally take care of the majority of questions asked day in and day out. So...it was a WIN.

To launch this, I had to figure out a few things in order to productize and here's what I did:

• I wrote out every single thing that needs to be done from the minute someone pays to the time the chatbot gets deployed on their website/facebook. I stored these steps in Google Sheets and then linked EACH step to a document that was the actual process for how each step is done.

• I created master "chatbots" and then made templates that had variations we can use. These are all hand coded and are customized for each customer.

• I listed every single asset I need to get from each customer and have it all documented and laid out in a "Welcome" email to the customer.

• I timed myself making my own customer service chatbot so I know exactly how much time it takes and documented those steps with processes.

• I made heavy use of tools like Zapier, Zendesk, and Crisp Chat to save money and bring in a lot of great functionality

• I set up Stripe and then I used WPForms to create a great onboarding form when someone pays for their new virtual assistant

• I made sure everything was consistent and ready to go

Now in hindsight I probably could have launched doing 1/2 of these things but I suffer from "wanting things to be perfect" syndrome and go overboard in the true sense of the word "lean" and "mvp". We all have issues and that's one of mine.

I made sure to have some proof and I made sure it was valuable to at least one person. haha. Then I did what everyone said "don't do" and I priced them extremely low because it's a product and I want to scale. I don't do "custom" requests though I take them in and will improve the product assuming I can make a sale.

When you launch something and no one buys it, I can tell you that you feel like you failed and you feel like it was a waste of time. That's where I'm at. I'm not sure if I should do the Product Hunt thing though I could try but to be honest my audience is small businesses that realize the value of customer service.

All I can say is that I believe in what I built and I have seen the results and that's really what matters. I think we all have these dreams of launching and selling from day one, but no one really even knows it exists yet so I gotta remind myself of that.

In a way, this is my MVP, it's a little too polished for a true MVP but I'm gonna go with that to feel a bit more empowered that at least I did something an I'm not sitting around saying "this would be cool to do".

Oh...it's called Prescriptive and it's at https://prescriptive.io

-Shane