Providing Support For A Startup

[murmy]

Providing an online support manager to handle payments and ensure things go smoothly is quite costly (especially in my area of online gaming). I was wondering, how are other startups handling this?

I was thinking the other day that if you promise a response within two working days, then potentially you could only need to hire someone to manage support on a Tuesday and a Friday because not all queries will fall right outside of hours on the Tuesday night.

Okay its not exactly as promised but its close enough and as a startup, in your first year while you have a very slow volume of business, perhaps its sensible to spend only on 2 days rather than a full 5 day week.

Any views on this would certainly be appreciated.

[httpwebwitch]

For one of my startups (I am running several! - ugh) I'm handing everything myself. It's a big job but if I stay focused it takes no more than 45 minutes per day. Some days I also need to do some maintenance work or bug fixing (rarely), and if that's the case then that can add hours to my workload.

I check that email box at least twice a day, and respond as promptly as I can.

Some day I would like to hire someone to take over those tasks, but I can't afford that until the client base grows and some money starts trickling in.

Quick support reaction breeds happy customers, and when you're a startup you need happy customers - early adopters who rave about your product and do your word-of-mouth advertising.

It would be better to have someone in for two hours per day, rather than sporadic full days spaced out. IMO.

[LifeinAsia]

Well, online gamers aren't exactly known for their patience or long attention spans... If you're not expecting that much support initially anyway, why do you even need to hire a support person?

[murmy]

Its online gaming (as in gambling) and its a heavily regulated industry. I absolutely have to hire someone to manage the day to day operations as I dont have the time (as im focussing on marketing) and I dont mind spending the money. It just seems sensible to build up to full time support rather than offer it right away.