4 steps startups need to build an effective self-service solution w/Zendesk Startups Success Manager

My name is Itay Geiger, and I lead the success program for the Zendesk Startup Initiative. And it's really important to me to help you create better experiences for your current and your future customers. Why do I care? Well, I've been working in startups for almost a decade now, building success and customer experience teams, programs, and processes. And I've seen firsthand how disruptive startups have changed the way that brands and businesses communicate with our customers and how that movement really changed customer expectations to the standard that we have today. So I'm really excited to share some thoughts on self-service with you. So for the founders who are watching, I'm sure that you are managing your burn rate. That's top of mind. And that's not just because you're a startup, but that's because of the state of the world that we're in today. Like we can't ignore that. And you know what, maybe you're growing really quickly and now you don't know the names and faces of your customers anymore. So you've sort of lost that personal connection to them. Maybe you don't have headcount or you had headcount. You just, you can't add people and, and, you know, you're likely a lean team, which means that you have to do more with less. And as a founder or someone who's responsible for building out customer experience in these small teams, you know, you're being pulled in a million directions. Everyone has to wear many hats. You know, you're managing all these business challenges that I've previously just mentioned and more, you know, everything is a priority and it was due yesterday. So honestly, you're only human, you know, and that means that you, you need sleep. You need to figure out when you get to sleep during all of that. And that's all to say that there is an easy way to help remove work off your plate so that you can focus on the areas of the business that really truly need your attention. And so what that means is self-service. You know, that's why I'm here to tell you that just by implementing proper self-service solutions for your customers, you will see happy customers, you'll see growth in product usage, and again, you'll have way more time to focus on these really, really high priorities for your business and to help scale that. So, uh, you know, I just rushed into a lot of like challenges and self-service, and, um, you know, I've worked in startups and this is, you know, maybe anecdotal, but I think, uh, the data speaks for itself. Itself. You know, it turns out that fast-growing startups have learned the importance of using help center articles. We did a study with over 4,400 startups using Zendesk and found a clear connection to investing in, in customer experience and success. I mean, you can look at the slide, you know, fast-growing startups have an average of 28% more help center articles in the first 6 months of using Zendesk than their slower than their slower growth peers. 28% more help center articles in the first 6 months of using Zendesk than their slower growth peers. I mean, that's, that's insane. That's crazy. And what's even more interesting is that that number jumps to 56% more by year 2. And when you look at the data, you'll find that the larger startups, you know, that have sort of become more mature and are growing with an employee range of roughly 100 to almost 1,000 people in their company actually had 70% more articles. I mean, that's a lot of content. That's a lot of information to be sharing with your customers. Just a quick side note, you can check out our Startup CX Benchmark Report that goes really deep into this data around this and other ways that fast-growing startups are utilizing tools like Zendesk. And I think you'll find that really, really helpful. What I wanna show you next is the, just like to visualize the direct impact. So in this graph, what we can see is that a customer is able to resolve their questions through an FAQ. And again, this leads teams to stay lean and nimble, which is something that is super important to you right now. And in this graph, what I'm gonna talk about here in a second is just, it shows the volume alone with what a really good self-service solution can have and that impact on your productivity and your efficiency. So if we look at the green bar, that represents all of the questions you might get inbound, and that's through various channels. The drop-off to the black bar right next to it, that represents the impact of your FAQs, just the impact of FAQs alone. I mean, like, that's more than half the tickets deflected, emails, phone calls. I mean, just by implementing it alone, I mean, you're seeing such a drop-off. Now, if you go from the black bar to the drop-off to the red bar, that's what something like a chatbot on the website can do to further deflect outreach. And then from the red bar to the yellow bar, that's what something like, you know, when you get suggested responses in your email reply that can solve questions, something that's a little bit more sophisticated in providing a response. And then finally, the yellow bar is actual human effort to respond to a customer request. So imagine how much more time you'd have back if you were going from 150,000 outreaches to less than 1,000 that needed a direct one-to-one human response. Response. And, and really ideally, those are the interactions that you want to be having, which are probably escalated for, for one reason or another. You always want to have that, that human connection either through an email or phone, but I think those should be like more complex issues that, that really need some sort of human touch. And this is exactly how you use a self-service tool to effectively, you know, leverage the time of your workforce, cut costs, increase customer experience, happiness, and ultimately revenue. These are things that are directly tied to revenue. So where do we start, right? Like self-service is super important, sure, but what am I supposed to do with that? I like saying the— I like the saying of work smart, not hard. I'm sure you've heard that. And you're already doing a million things. You have so much to manage. It's so— it's never-ending. So starting with the work that you've already done, I think is really the best place. And that's going to be your frequently asked questions. You know, it's really important when you think about, you know, the growth and the birth of a startup and like, how do you set the foundation for scalability? And I think being a knowledge-focused organization is one of the most important things. So one goal you may not have considered yet is that as you grow, you want to be a knowledge-centered organization. And why is that important? Well, it's gonna help in a lot of ways. It's gonna help with onboarding new hires, will take them a lot less time to understand the customer pain points or, you know, how your product works. Like it just informs people, you know, much quicker. And then ultimately using a knowledge-based methodology as a driving force, you know, that inherently means that you're thinking about your customers and their needs, which equals good customer experiences. So, okay, that's the sort of like fundamental, that's the philosophy around it, but like how do you create a good FAQ? Like let's, let's discuss what it's made of. You know, where you want to really start to think about is this, you know, speak to your customer pain points based on the problems that you're expecting them to have relative to your product, your marketing activities, and the questions that you already know that you're being asked about. You know, that's a great place to start. So if you know there are some issues with specific feature, or even what happens after they've used your product for a period of time, you know, or maybe a new promotion you're testing, you know, you really want to be serving them the most relevant support and what's sort of like happening in real time. You also want to cover a wide net of topics and content. What this shows is that you're considering their entire experience and journey from beginning to end, right? Like, a customer doesn't just like stop at one point and say, oh, how does billing work? And then that's that's it. I mean, they're really thinking holistically of at any point, like, where, where can, where can I see that the company's really thinking of me? And that's a really great way to do that. Your FAQ should mirror when you, where your product and your policies are today. So if you, if you have a change in how billing is processed, you don't want to, you don't want to serve them the wrong information, right? Or maybe you've changed your interface for a feature. You know, you don't want to confuse your customers by showing them something that doesn't exist or looks different. Also, a good FAQ helps other parts of your business. So by being a new source of content creation, that can be leveraged for marketing activities. You know, really thinking about how your product works can also support how you're promoting your business. It should also validate the level of trust you're willing and capable of providing your customers. And this is a really good— this is a really important point, especially if you think about SaaS or sort of like, sort of like folks in the enterprise space. Um, you know, customers, especially when you're starting out, they don't really like feeling like you're the biggest fish in the pond, or that, that they might be the only large customer, let alone maybe the, the only customer. Like, that that is really offsetting, um, about, uh, you know, the relationship between you and your customer that you may have been able to get so early on in your, in your, uh, in your growth. So, you know, making them feel like that they're not the only one, uh, that can be represented in a really good FAQ. This also compounds on content creation and showcases that you know your market, your competitions, that you are a disruptor. It's a great way to justify your knowledge of the space and your product and what problem you're solving. One thing I'm sure you probably didn't think about is what is that, you know, really good FAQ, there's a potential to have a lot of visibility from an SEO perspective. Maybe not directly to your website, you know, that there's always gonna be some small disconnect, but you know, we think about blogs, it's really hard to get organic traffic and it requires you to create like super relative— relevant content with really great keywords. But if you're putting out data or information that helps your customers, you're going to see a lot of organic engagement and upvotes and comments. It's just sort of like naturally where people are searching and looking and communicating. And these articles in a lot of ways can get a lot of visibility through Google searches. And so maybe if it's not directly to your website, you're, you're still getting brand visibility. And that's something that I don't think people think a lot about when they're thinking about creating a really great FAQ and its sort of long-term benefits. Uh, so quick tips, like, again, like we're talking about where to get started and how to think about these things. Um, you know, ultimately you want to start small, set the bar low for yourself. You know, we're talking about progress in a short amount of time, not perfection. So there shouldn't be a rush to create 100 articles. Obviously I said earlier that, um, you know, the, the sort of like higher growth startups can compare to slower growth startups have way more content, but that's just over period of time that didn't happen overnight. And there's a lot again that you want to create, but again, you don't need to bombard yourself because ultimately if you have too much, then you won't even start. Uh, you know, if you're seeing a lot of the same, uh, email, if you're sending it a lot, the same content over and over and over again, and you can repeat it, uh, that's the thing that you can easily make an article. Um, one place that I would recommend is create a Google Doc that has all the questions that you've ever received more than just a few times. And has the same response that you provided, that's a great place to start to create sort of like the structure of FAQ if you don't have one. And you can also start with mapping the most frequent questions you get from all your different channels and what you know, what you get versus email versus a web form. Again, sort of collecting all this in one place is a really important place to start. This might sound obvious, but it's really important to keep your FAQs really well organized. Honestly, organization for this is really a key factor. You know, many great FAQ pages are useful because their questions are well grouped and categorized. You know, questions should be broken down into common categories so that the visitors, when they get there, they, you know, they're— it's easy for them to find what they're looking for. And the last thing you want from them to reach out— I mean, honestly, the last thing you want is for them to reach out because they can't find what they're looking for, which defeats the purpose of having an FAQ in the first place. Yes. And so I would say start with maybe 5 or 10 questions and these 5 or 10 questions, you know, again, like you're just sort of sourcing from what you've already heard, but ask yourself and your team some simple questions. You know, what do you know your customers are already struggling with? What are the answers that can be easily put into writing? You know, again, what are the things that are off the top of your head? You know, these are usually things that are super low-hanging fruit. These are easy, quick answers that might only need one response. If you're sending the same question, if you're seeing the same question come in and it's a very short response, that should be an FAQ immediately. And honestly, checking in with your team, with the folks who are maybe interacting with customers or working on the product, that's a, you know, really making sure that they're involved with that because they might know things are coming down the pipe that might be an issue. Again, like what are the known things that you're going to, you know, to expect to have a lot of impact on your customers? And those are product changes, marketing initiatives. Things that touch a lot of customers, like what— how can you answer those questions preemptively? Also, what are the things that are really consuming issues, time-consuming specifically? You know, is it possible to put direction into an article that helps customers find the answers for themselves? And I think yes, definitely. And if you are intending on having, uh, sort of like success organization, um, you know, those folks really rely on a lot of this content to serve to the customers. And so if you can Think about things that might take a lot of time and effort for a customer to do with onboarding or implementation. Like, that's a great place to put, you know, documentation in an FAQ. And so once you've all this compiled, you know, now you really have the first steps for building a really good FAQ. You have a lot of material that you can share with your new hires. You have a lot of material that you can make sure your customers are getting that will onboard them. And so this is just sort of like a compounding effort. I also think it's really important to do this exercise on a regular basis where you're checking in with your team and understanding, hey, what are these problems and how can we update the FAQ? Especially as things shift while you're growing, you know, making it a habit early on ensures that there's team collaboration, knowledge transfer, and that you're really dialed into what your customers are experiencing in real time, especially again as you're growing and changing. If there's one thing or anything really that you take away from this session, it really is, you know, it doesn't take a lot to create immediate impact, right? Like you want immediate impact, time to value. Like this is one of those things that don't necessarily get talked about a lot, I would argue. You know, we're like, okay, we gotta get sales, we gotta get customers, we gotta get our brand out there. I also think that making sure that you have an FAQ, a really good FAQ that you put investment into, is one of those things that are— it's just imperative for strategy in terms of growth. So investing in self-service now, it really pays off tenfold. And, you know, a little bit can go a long way. You know, our customers see that the top 5 articles in their help center account for roughly 40% of all daily views on their website. 40% of folks who show up on their website are looking at their FAQs. And so by investing in a handful of articles, low-hanging fruit, stuff that you know they're going to be asking about, you're going to be able to scale more efficiently with your existing resources, right? Like stuff that you already know that you have. And as a result, self-service is literally one of the most cost-efficient support channels. You know, we think about support, it's, it's really about, okay, we need agents, uh, and we need to be able to answer the phones and we need all these things. Uh, again, FAQs allow for a really, really cost-efficient support growth and model. Okay, so, so we talked about why FAQs are important, how startups grow with this, how to kind of start with it, what to think about. Um, a lot of questions that we get are sort of like, well, okay, I did all this work, how do I get people to show up to, to these FAQs? How do I know, uh, that, that is out there? How do I make sure people stop emailing me directly and actually start using the FAQs? So here are a couple ways that are pretty effective. The, the first one is just make it obvious on your website. Find creative ways to highlight your most common questions, you know, create a call to action through a, through, uh, an in-product message, um, or, or in a marketing initiative, things that are, that people see regularly. Make sure that you can create curiosity and, uh, direction to your FAQs. And these are things like, okay, you've got a really good article that, you know, people are hitting all the time, promote it, get it out there, um, get people on your website over to your FAQ. The second thing is that, you know, there's no shame in letting your followers, whether that be through social media, on your website, if you're writing on Medium, whatever, that you have this really amazing, uh, information to share that will help them. Again, this goes back to, uh, your willingness to help. Your customers and their needs, right? Like the level of trust, right? By promoting, like showing people that, that you understand your product and, and, uh, your, your, the market, that you're a leader in this space. Like these are the things that you should not be afraid of, um, and you should be really promoting. There's no shame in that. And that means like showing up in forums and directing people to your, to your articles, you know, make an announcement. There's no, there's, that's a great way to say, hey, we care about our customers. And look at all this awesome information that will help you get started with our product. The next one is you're already communicating with your customers in a lot of different ways. So add visibility there, you know, put it in newsletters and in the, you know, again, like marketing things that you're sending out, maybe your salespeople are talking to customers, let people know through those sort of one-to-one interactions, or maybe it's a one-to-many where you've got lots of reach that, hey, we've got this FAQ. Um, you know, make regular updates. So if you've made a new article, uh, or a new launch, like let people know that there's information on this, on this FAQ. Um, another really great way that I use this is, um, if someone reaches out to me and is like, hey, how do I do this? How do I set this up? Just send them the article, send them the article, let them figure out, oh wow, there's this really great place that has all this information that has all the steps that I need. Then you can start to change the behavior, uh, again, from like a one-to-one, one-to-one perspective. Email signatures— I have anytime I reach out to people, I always have my FAQs available there. You know, just like really simple, easy ways that, that might— you might think go unnoticed, but actually people might click on. So again, like, the more, the more that you can spread this out, the better. And then the last way is something with like a web widget. We have a solution like that that you can embed into your help center, but there's a lot of other products out there that sort of follow customers around on the website. But ultimately what I'm trying to point out here is like, just let people know wherever they are that you have this FAQ. And if you can make it relevant and contextual, like, that's even better. So here's some visuals of what that looks like. You know, here you've got, you know, frequently asked questions. You need to— you need answers. Like, so some people have like a general, general questions type of landing page, but they may not have an actual like help center. So you have something like that where you might have some answers to questions, direct, direct people to your sort of more comprehensive help center is a great way to do that. The next one is blogs. Like if you're posting a lot of content out there and people want to know how your product works, a great way to do is just like hyperlink any sort of specific callout in the blog to the Help Center. Again, sort of like sneaking in your FAQ at as many ways as possible. The other ways, as I mentioned earlier, is just making it easy in your signature. Hey, you need— you have got questions? Here, check out the FAQ. Super easy to find. Okay, so I saw a question here about how often do you edit your Help Center articles? So what I want to talk about is like, how do you improve your content continuously? And I think that having a regular cadence, whatever works for you, is the right way. But here's a simple methodology to do that. The first thing to do is set a goal. You know, take your FAQs seriously. Treat it with, you know, with the level of strategy and planning as you might your sales targets or your marketing initiatives. Like, it's really important to set those goals. Make it a team sport. Include everybody across the board. To help you solve this, measure it, make sure that, you know, the pathway for people to get from your product to the FAQs is seamless, and then make sure that it's available on all different types of devices. That's really the sort of like methodology on how to think about it. And, you know, a good team will have somebody captain this, and they'll do it at least on a monthly basis. On a monthly basis. So if you're not doing this— weekly is a little excessive, but monthly is a really great place to start in terms of setting a goal, making sure everybody's involved, focus on the experience, and make sure that it's widely available. So I'm going to wrap it up there. Thank you all so much. I want to take some questions if you have any. I think there was a couple in the chat, so I'm going to stop sharing and allow for some questions. Okay, let's see, what do I got here? Uh, is the FAQ owned by sales or marketing? Um, I think it just depends on the dynamic of your team. Uh, ultimately, uh, you, again, you want somebody who's going to own the FAQ, sort of be the sponsor. Uh, I think in a more mature company, usually it's like the support organization will own that. Uh, but, but for the beginning, it's probably going to be marketing because they're doing a lot of content creation. Creation, communication, and they're probably working very close with marketing. And then from that standpoint, then they can enable sales to, to be better informed when they're talking with the customer. So, so I would say if you don't have a support organization, start with marketing. That's probably the best place because they're going to have a lot of creative and content that can serve this information in a really effective way. Do you recommend any software to build, host your FAQs? Pros and cons? Well, I'm biased. Zendesk has a really good solution for that. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff out there. At the end of the day, again, as long as you're putting this, the effort and the commitment, you're already doing the work. And that's really what's important is making investment, making the choice to have this be a part of your business strategy is ultimately what we're trying to get at here is that making as visible as possible, making it easy to get to, that's really what's most important. Thank you for the question there. Should the help center—

Can I jump in here?

Oh yeah, please.

So sorry, we've gone just a little bit over time. Over the, the session time here. Um, so we do have to wrap up, but any— anything that you want to close out with?

Yeah, definitely. Um, please join us at our Zendesk booth. We've got a lot of content there that, uh, will serve some of the questions that I think people are asking. We've got lots of demos, uh, and the Zendesk RBC team is doing a 6-month program where you can apply and join Zendesk and get 6 months for free and get access to all this really great product. Thank you again all for joining. It was really great to share these best practices, and we hope to see you at our booth. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And just a reminder for everyone that this content will be available on demand after the fact, and we will see you at the next session.