Should I stick with it? Should I move on?
So basically I've spent January building a product that I'm not sure is really worth sticking with.
It's essentially a support centre shop. Indiehackers such as yourselves would have a 30 min conversation with me about support tickets you see come in and I would build an entire (branded) support centre off the back of that conversation, with screengrabs etc.
Charge for the upfront cost -couple of hundred and a monthly recurring fee, like 15/20 of your local currency (euro, GBP, Dollars).
What do you think? Should I kill it and move on? Or continue to try to sell it.
What's telling me to continue; I know this is a need, it happens a lot. What's telling me to quit it; the need doesn't come up that often.
I've built the CMS with WordPress with bootstrap. Let me know what you think!
It sounds like you’ve built something or have a value prop based on experience or a broad understanding, but rather than actually test it in the real world (the scary, hard part) you’re thinking of moving to the next idea (safer and more fun). I think this is a common situation for more than a few people (myself included). If you can, try to get 1 customer and move from there. 🙂
+1 b/c I'm guilty of this and now forcing myself to stick with it.
Such a beautiful advice! Thank you for sharing!
Very true, thank you Shaunau!
I'm confused.
Tbh I have no idea what you offer... What is a support centre shop?
Apologies to all, maybe I shouldn't have posted the example link as it's adding to confusion. You know when you go to the Support section of any website or app? It's that - that's what I'm selling
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No one seems to understand what you're offering :)
From what i understand you're offering a one time service to create support docs and then a monthly fee for hosting the docs on WP.
Not a fan of the WP solution, they most likely already have a solution set up, if they don't they don't feel the pain and aren't a customer for you most likely.
I agree with @Shaunau go speak with customers. Indie hackers most likely aren't your target audience you want someone with a bigger budget.
Not sure what exactly this is doing.
Is it automated, or are you hand-writing the customer service responses?
Hand writing the documentation - it's a bunch of help articles is all. Sorry for confusion!
Sorry to say but your websites messaging is confusing.
Have no idea what's going on.
I think you've made a classic error of building a product without any kind of validation.
How are you going to drive people to your website. And when you do I can't see them converting too well.
Hey. I'm wondering how is this different than support software like Front?
Are you providing customer service as a service? Or the software?
The idea is to begin customer service as a service. But the first offering would be to sell a Help center to a company. Also, ignore the link I posted, it's just adding to confusion. So I can only apologise.
Let me explain.
You know when you go to the help centre to try to figure something out about a product or service, like you have a question about how Airbnb works and you Google it, and you find yourself at a help article explaining how the service or app works,that would be what I sell. The whole thing.
The way that Zendesk sells this CRM currently, is with the expectation that they are selling the Help Centre CRM to large companies that have whole swathes of content writers to populate the site with. Whereas I would sell direct to indiehackers an entire help centre.
Is this more clear?
Front is a shared inbox application, thats now how I interpreted this
Having used front for years, I am not aware of a built in documentation as a service in their platform. I am currently building a DaaS(Documentation as a Service) which lets you build up your support and knowledge base to reduce tickets to your CS team.
Do you have any info on front offering stuff like this, other than helpdocs integration?
Documentation as a service - that's exactly what I am offering. Is it a viable business makr?
Of course, there is enough business for everyone to go around.
Obviously, we are competitors in this field and I have no problem telling you to pursue this idea.
Best of luck!
Edit: I just read that you are offering a DaaS as well as offering to generate the support content. I think that there is definitely a market for this. You just need to show managers that you can make documentation that saves them ticket time. You need to cast a big net and you will like what you yield.
Thanks so much makr! Yes I think you are right, having looked into zendesks net worth, I think there is a lot of opportunity for us both :-D
There's also knowledge base software like Helpjuice
This doesn't mean stop but perhaps use them for inspiration. Find some way to differentiate.
Yes, thanks Dru. I suppose my differential would be the creation of the content itself. My clients would just have to give a bullet point, and I'd go away and fill in the blanks - write the content
I assume you're talking about handling the service operations yourself? Customer service as a service is definitely a viable business. There are companies doing it and charging much more than what you're proposing. Do you have any potential customers or a marketing plan?
It's more - documentation as a service. I would write the whole help centre. In time I believe o could handle the customer service side of things. But use documentation as a way in
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by "support centre". Don't saas products like Zendesk solve this problem? Correct me if I'm wrong!
Having said all that. I'm still not sure it's a viable business
They do, that's true. But, they assume that you have a whole team of people to write the content, and they structure pricing per license of content writer. Whereas my service would be to sell the writing of the content, the branding of the entire CMS and hosting, targeting indiehackers with no interest in hiring content writers or haven't got the time to create the help center themselves
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