I just wanted to thank you for setting me straight on the email/support helpdesk issue.

You may recall, a couple of weeks ago, after my first run-in with your new support helpdesk, I wrote you a rather harsh email “lambasting” (for lack of a better term) you. You emailed me back detailing your reasons for why you did what you did.

I gave your email, and this article you wrote on the subject a few days later, a lot of serious thought that week and came to the conclusion that, even though I may not like it, if I didn’t do something myself *now* (as you suggest in this article), I was going to be in serious trouble in the very near future.

With three active websites, I already get close to a thousand emails a day like you do, the only difference being I get only 20-30 out of that requiring a reply (the rest being spam, etc.) versus your 200-300 a day requiring a reply.

Even with just that, I’ve easily killed entire days just dealing with email. Simple math told me a year from now, with a few more websites, I would be in serious, serious, serious trouble.

So, even though I don’t 100% like it, lacking any better ideas, I set up my own support helpdesk (with Kayako, having them host it as you suggest in this article) a few days later.

Even though I haven’t finished posting all the necessary knowledgebase articles and fully integrated it with my websites and autoresponder messages, I can see from my limited use of it, it will save me a tremendous amount of time and frustration now and even more so, in the future.

Thank you again for setting me straight on this one!

Tony Mase

I wanted to comment about your video regarding the MP3 scare. I think you are right about using this as an opportunity to offer a better product. Although I am not doing anything along that line, I am finding a similar situation in my business using Adsense. I have been using Traffic Generator with good success ($10,000 per month for 4 months) and have seen a drop of 90% since April. This is primarily because of the nature of the TE pages that mimic content. I could rollover and cry in my root beer, but I am determined to offer good content. So I am in the process of adding content to my pages. I feel better because the last thing I want to do is spam content. I am also diversifying and building other lines of income. Hopefully my other sites will last long enough to get some replacements going.

BTW, in using MP3s… keep yourself out of jail until after October; I’m going on the cruise with you. I want to learn how to create killer e-books (another stream of income)!

Looking forward to Oct.

Gene

Quick warning though – Kayako is in Beta on a brand new version 6/27/05) that will be a significant improvement. The downside is it will be some work to move the current install over to the new version. My recommendation? Wait until Version 3 is out for a month or two before you install it.

Jeff Mulligan

I was thinking of installing a help desk system for shiblon software. I’ve noticed that Kayako one around the net for a few years now, I just didn’t know the name of it or where to find it. Pricing is a bit out of my range though so I think I’ll try out a few free ones first.

Not all companies have abandoned email. We support several million mailboxes in over 25,000 domains and subdomains and we use email. Done the right way, its OK, but then our system is so stable that the support calls are relatively few.

Most companies can’t handle it – even with help desk software, they are terrible at support. Try getting a personal response from earthlink or yahoo.

Alan.