Octavio Ruiz is the founder of Incuvox, a computer telephony integrations company based in Mexico City. Octavio founded the company ten years ago with two other people, something they decided to do after building a portfolio of apps that saw high demand. Since it’s just the three of them (and occasionally, a temporary contractor to help when it gets very busy), they have many tasks to juggle when it comes to their customers, from resolving support issues to sales and marketing. Here’s how they do it all with SupportBee.
How were you handling customer support originally?
We were using email and phone calls. Since we are a business operating in the telephony space, we felt we should be offering customers the ability to call us. It was mostly the small business customers that would call us.
Anything we used to run our business was free and open-source...we were not paying for subscriptions.
What are the customer support challenges unique to your industry?
We specialize in working with call centers; they also run a business around customer service, so we have to be quick to respond.
The most difficult part (and part of the success of using support tickets) is that we had to move customers away from calling and over to ticketing. Helping them to understand how important it was to open a ticket with us online was a challenge at first, coming from the phone model. Making that switch to email ticketing was challenging, but once we achieved that everything went so much more smoothly.
Why did you choose SupportBee?
We were using OTRS, but it required more work from us--it always needed our time and attention to manage it. We didn’t need a super ticketing system, we just wanted one user. We looked at ZenDesk but it was really expensive for us.
Depending on the project, we sometimes add employees and sometimes it’s just us. So we need to be efficient, and be able to keep track of our customers' specialized needs. We became aware that most open-source solutions for ticketing needed a lot of attention from the user. And, they didn’t always work.
It was easy to see SupportBee as an alternative since it got good reviews.
What does your day-to-day look like?
At the top, we have maybe 5 email support tickets come in a day. The nature of the business means they must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis--one request could take an hour or a whole day. More complicated requests need to be split into multiple tickets, which SupportBee does. We like that feature because splitting tickets helps us to understand how to tackle the problem.
We also use SupportBee to generate a lot of internal tickets. If I need a partner to do something, I open a ticket for him.
What do you like about SupportBee?
Its a to-do list for us. We chose it for the shared inbox, and its per-user plan makes it affordable. SupportBee’s APIs for integrations are great options as well.
The solution always works--it always works--so we don’t even think about it! So we can spend more time on building software.
It gives me peace of mind--I am not constantly worrying about what needs to be done. I open SupportBee and in just one view I can see all of my open tickets and assess how long it will take to solve an issue. I can organize my work in a very professional way.
We try not to be at the office all the time...I also run a cafe here. When I’m at the cafe I need to look professional to my Incuvox customers. With all I have going on, I need efficiency and need to quickly know what’s happening.
Have you read the book Getting Things Done? A big rule is to not have your to-do list living in your mind. Know that your tasks are written down and organized somewhere, and that’s how I use SupportBee--to discharge my mind and know that things will get done.
What is your customer service philosophy?
We need to be able to keep an open door to our customers...they need to be able to reach us for support. We need to be able to efficiently receive requests from our customers.
We have been using SupportBee for seven years, and we’ll continue to use it as long as we are in business.
What advice would you have for someone entering a career in customer service for telephony services?
Keep yourself focused on what you know. Let others do the work--using SupportBee is an excellent example of that. Having a ticketing system lets you be always available for your customers, be professional and keep track of how much time it takes to solve an issue. Invest time in your knowledge base as it reduces the time it takes to keep your customers happy!
