Jelly

The second half of 2024 was definitely an inflection point in the world of software. Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI started to permeate products everywhere, from chatbots to operating systems, and at times it felt like everyone was taking part in a race to integrate some AI feature or other into their product.

This seems to have been particularly true in the world of customer support. Whole businesses seem to have pivoted, turning AI into their central feature as if their very lives depended on it. Some taglines from well-known companies leave no doubt:

The best AI Agent and AI-first Customer Service Platform

Try our new AI integration!

AI-first service.

... and I can see the appeal for some businesses.

But personally, I hate talking to bot or AI customer service tools. Is there anything more frustrating than carefully explaining your issue, then inexplicably being railroaded through some set of pointless questions or regurgitated knowledge-base articles, desperately hoping that if you can only jump through all these hoops like a good little boy, you might be able to eventually get in touch with an actual person who can actually read and understand your question and actually help you at the end of the tortuous process? It makes my blood boil!

And as these big players double down on AI, it feels clearer than ever that they are really only focussed on customers who are so big that they don’t need to care how frustrating their support processes are. Companies for whom support is a cost centre they are trying to minimise.

Jelly takes a different position. Jelly is about connecting actual people having actual conversations — support requests, questions, and all other kinds of collaboration.

We're a small company, too. We know that the communication between us and our customers, existing or potential, will be one of the biggest factors in our success. There's no way we want an AI agent representing us in those vital conversations. Our bet is that there are thousands of other small companies and groups who neither need nor want an AI agent sitting between them and the people they want to communicate with.

If you've been looking for a way for your team to share an inbox and work together to talk to your users, customers, clients, collaborators, and anyone else -- try Jelly. It's the simplest, most elegant, most humane way to work on email as a team.

I've been trying to build Jelly for more than ten years.

The first time I wanted a shared inbox, I was organising a conference - the first Ruby Manor in London - with some friends. We relied heavily on email, for communicating with attendees and speakers, negotiating with venues, and so on, and it was obvious that it would be better if we could both see all our conversations, instead of them being locked in our individual inbox silos.

So I looked into what our options were, and even back then, everything was overcomplicated and expensive. The only real options were CRMs designed for companies exclusively doing product support; companies who can afford to pay $50 per person per month using the tool, because they know they'll get that investment back in sales/refunds avoided.

But that didn't fit for us. Not every interaction with someone is a "ticket". And could we handle being penalised with another per-seat charge if we brought another volunteer helper on board? Nope.

I took a few stabs at scratching this itch, like any motivated developer might, but it never really took off.

Since that experience, I've felt the same need multiple times, most recently working as part of Good Enough: a Serious Business making Fun Products for Real People. We don't have support agents or sales people; it's just us, talking to our users, and also talking to people in general that we'd like to meet or know. Y'know -- conversations.

For a while, we muddled along sharing a Fastmail account, doing the "mark-as-unread-so-other-people-will-see-it" dance with our emails. And again, I was reminded of the need I felt, for a simple, affordable way for group of folk to share an inbox.

So this time, we built it. Jelly - the best way for a team to share an email address.

We've been using it for almost a year, and we love it. There's no way we could go back. And we want to get it into the hands of every other team and group that's too small to matter to the behemoths in this space like ZenDesk, HelpScout and Intercom. Let them have the multi-million dollar company accounts, that's fine. We like building things for the little guys instead.