🛠️ How to pick the right tools for your support team

Do not index

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts that we will be releasing. It’s geared towards founders who are trying to set up a ticketing system for their business.

Choosing tools is painful, especially when you’re learning a new function (like support). Coming up with the evaluation criteria and putting together comparison charts is tedious. So we did that for you here.

🧰 Support stack

The primary tool you’ll need is a ticketing system to manage customer questions. In addition, you’ll need to use other tools to help understand your customers. Even though these other tools are typically owned by other teams, it’s worth understanding them since you’ll need to use them and integrate them with your ticketing system.

Let’s go through the basics of each tool you’ll need.

Ticketing tools

What it is: track questions and requests (ie, tickets) from customers so that you can respond to them

Why you need one: to organize your responses so that you know which ticket have been resolved, who owns each ticket, which tickets are highest priority, and gives you the tools to respond better and faster

Examples: Atlas*, Zendesk, Intercom, Front

CRM

What it is: a customer relationship manager (CRM) organizes all of your communications with a person and their associated company, primarily in the context of B2B sales

Why you need one: to organize your sales outreach and communications so that you know who on your team has talked to a given prospect, what their pipeline status is, and who own the relationship with them

Examples: HubSpot*, Salesforce, Close, Pipedrive

Session recording

What it is: records the activity of your site visitors and gives you the ability to replay those sessions as videos

Why you need one: to understand how your customers are using your app and to diagnose problems for specific customers in a support context

Examples: Atlas*, FullStory, Hotjar, LogRocket

Internal tool

What it is: a UI layer on top of your database with actions enabled for basic business logic

Why you need one: to perform manual tasks for users that they may not be able to do on their own, often because you don’t want them to be able to take these actions or because you haven’t built them into your product yet (eg, forced password reset, change plans, enable features, force delete entities, etc.)

Examples: Retool*, Internal, Superblocks, Airplane

Project management tool

What it is: tracks tasks and projects your internal teams are working on, typically in the context of product and engineering teams

Why you need one: to stakeholders, specifically your support team, aware of the progress of different tasks, usually bugs or manual tasks that require engineering assistance

Examples: Linear*, Asana, Jira, ClickUp

⚖️ Evaluating tools

Once you’ve decided on the types of tools you want in your stack, you have to choose the specific tool to use for each.

Here are the criteria we’d recommend you use in your evaluation:

🛠️ functionality: will it handle your core jobs to be done?

💸 price: will it fit within your budget?

🏃velocity: how quickly is the product improving?

⭐ support: how good is their support?

📈 scalability: will this tool handle our needs at the next stage of growth?

Here are comparison grids for each tool:

Ticketing tools comparison chart

ㅤ	⭐ Atlas	Zendesk	Intercom	Front
🛠️ functionality	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
ticket management	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
set priority, tag, and assign tickets	✅	✅	✅	✅
link tickets to project management issues	✅	✅	✅	✅
respond well	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
custom fields	✅	✅	✅	✅
user history	✅	❌	❌	❌
related bugs	✅	❌	❌	❌
session recordings	✅	❌	❌	❌
channels	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
email	✅	✅	✅	✅
chat	✅	✅	✅	✅
SMS	✅	add-on	add-on	add-on
WhatsApp	✅	✅	✅	❌
Slack	✅	❌	❌	❌
💸 price	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
free tier	✅	❌	❌	❌
startup pricing	$40/seat/mo	$69/seat/mo	$74/mo	$59/seat/mo
price scaling	per seat	per seat	per seat, per customer	per seat
🏃velocity	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
how often do they release new features? bug fixes?	biweekly	quarterly	quarterly	monthly
⭐ support	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
which channels are offered for support?	email, chat, Slack	email	email, chat	email, chat
📈 scalability	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
help center	✅	✅	✅	❌
chatbot	✅	✅	✅	✅
custom events in timeline	✅	❌	❌	❌
custom events in session recordings	✅	❌	❌	❌

CRM

ㅤ	⭐ HubSpot	Salesforce	Close	Pipedrive
🛠️ functionality	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
account management	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
create customers, accounts, deals	✅	✅	✅	✅
meetings	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
schedule and log meetings	✅	✅	✅	✅
sync with calendar	✅	✅	✅	✅
💸 price	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
free tier	✅	❌	❌	❌
startup pricing	$20/seat/mo	$25/seat/mo	$59/mo	$22/seat/mo
price scaling	per seat, per customer	per seat	per seat	per seat
🏃velocity	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
how often do they release new features? bug fixes?	monthly	quarterly	biweekly	monthly
⭐ support	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
which channels are offered for support?	email, chat	email (limited)	email, chat	email, chat

Session recording

ㅤ	⭐ Atlas	FullStory	Hotjar	LogRocket
🛠️ functionality	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
records all user sessions	✅	✅	❌	✅
integrates with customer timeline	✅	❌	❌	❌
developer console	✅	✅	❌	✅
show bugs in sessions	✅	❌	❌	❌
show conversations in sessions	✅	❌	❌	❌
associate sessions with support tickets	✅	❌	❌	❌
💸 price	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
free tier	500 sessions/mo	❌	1,000 sessions/mo	1,000 sessions/mo
startup pricing	$40/mo	$69/mo	$74/mo	$59/mo
price scaling	per session	per session	per session	per session
🏃velocity	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
how often do they release new features? bug fixes?	biweekly	monthly	biweekly	monthly
⭐ support	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
which channels are offered for support?	email, chat, Slack	email	email, chat	email, chat
📈 scalability	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
show custom events in sessions	✅	❌	❌	❌
watch live sessions	✅	✅	❌	❌

Internal tool

ㅤ	⭐ Retool	Internal	Superblocks	Airplane
🛠️ functionality	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
ease of setup	✅	✅	✅	❌
completeness of components	✅	❌	❌	❌
iframe embedding	✅	❌	✅	❌
visual builder	✅	✅	✅	❌
mobile friendly	✅	✅	✅	❌
💸 price	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
free tier	✅	✅	✅	✅
startup pricing	$10/seat/mo	$5/seat/mo	$50/seat/mo	$10/seat/mo
price scaling	per seat	per seat	per seat	per seat
🏃velocity	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
how often do they release new features? bug fixes?	biweekly	biweekly	biweekly	biweekly
⭐ support	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
which channels are offered for support?	email, chat	email, chat	email	community forum
📈 scalability	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
roles & permissions	✅	✅	❌	❌

Project management tool

ㅤ	⭐ Linear	Asana	Jira	Notion	ClickUp
🛠️ functionality	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
issue management	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
set priority, tag, and assign tickets	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
link issues to support tickets	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
usability	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
modern UI	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
keyboard driven	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
💸 price	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
free tier	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
startup pricing	$8/mo	$11/mo	$8/mo	$8/mo	$7/mo
price scaling	per seat	per seat	per seat	per seat	per seat
🏃velocity	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
how often do they release new features? bug fixes?	biweekly	monthly	quarterly	biweekly	monthly
⭐ support	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
which channels are offered for support?	email, chat, Slack	email	email	email	email, chat
📈 scalability	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ	ㅤ
supports large teams	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
integrates with code repos	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

🗣️ Evaluating channels

Once you’ve chosen your tools, it’s time to choose the channels you’ll use to talk to your customers. Use the following questions to choose the channels you’ll use:

natural channels: where do my customers want to talk with me?

responsiveness: how quickly can I respond to my customers?

Natural channels

The most natural channel for your business is usually set upstream in user acquisition. If you find your customers through email, email is the natural channel. If you use Slack in your implementation process, Slack is the natural channel.

If your customers generally come through a marketing funnel and are self-serve (eg, B2C or early-stage PLG), then higher latency support is the most natural. Specifically, web form or email support.

For most early stage B2B startups, Slack Connect is generally the best choice since it lets you give your customers a white-glove experience and gives you a tighter feedback loop with your customers.

Responsiveness

The caveat to the most natural channel is that you need to be able to meet customer expectations of the responsiveness of a given channel. Early on, this is generally best fit by email or Slack Connect. If your customers live in your app and your team is able to respond quickly, chat is a good choice. If your customers don’t return to your site often (eg, D2C), SMS is a good choice.

Conclusion

Once you’ve setup your support team, the cheapest and best way to get more out of them is to give them the right tools. We’ll go over the types of tools you should be using that in our next post.