Support Examples

Productivity

support reply templates

SHOW HN2020

198points
83comments
#282of 3,028 in 2020
Top 10%of 2020 by points

How HN took it

RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical

2 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 26 critical, out of 37 comments about the project. Thread score -0.63.

Idea: 1 for, 20 againstExecution: 1 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful for non-native English speakers as wording inspiration

    From 1 comment
    • Thank you! As a non-native English speaker this is actually pretty useful. Of course I don't think this should be used as a copy/paste solution but more for finding inspiration…
      agopaul on HN

Objections

  • Replies feel patronising, insincere and generic

    From 5 comments
    • Might be a British/American difference but I found all of these incredibly patronising and insincere. You need empathy and sincerity to be good at customer service. At the very…
      mjmasn on HN
    • Seems like a collection of generic corporate speak. Most of them are some variation on "I'm so [sorry/happy] that you had a [frustrating/great] experience with our product".
      vinaypai on HN
    • They stand out as overly verbose and insincere, but I'm not sure that's something worth emulating.
      throwanem on HN
    • If "standing out" is your goal, sorry but generic boilerplate platitudes is not the way to go. I reckon the problem is this vague notion that exists about what "professional"…
      brianmcc on HN
    • Yeah, no. The patronizing wall-of-text approach is terrible. Actual useful support replies can't really be scripted, because they are specific to the context of the request.
      deeblering4 on HN
  • Replies do not solve the actual problem

    From 2 comments
    • None of the answers shown have anything to do with fixing the problem. If I contact support, I want either a fix or a refund. See "Bedbug letter".[1] [1]…
      Animats on HN
    • As someone who have worked in support for a long time, these may do the trick for a non-technical customer base that isn't interested in anything but 75% therapy and 25% problem…
      hnarn on HN
  • Canned responses hurt authenticity and reduce trust

    From 2 comments
    • These canned responses totally miss the point. Good support comes from putting knowledgeable people who truly care on the front lines, and giving them the tools and authority to…
      rkagerer on HN
    • I'm all in favor of reusing my own replies to customers as long as I customize them. I'm just saving myself some typing. I teach others to do this as a way to optimize their…
      geocrasher on HN

Requests

  • Fix HTTP access by redirecting to HTTPS

    From 1 comment
    • Hey sivaram636, can I request that you redirect port 80 to 443? You've already got TLS and HSTS enabled, but people can still use your site via HTTP, which is what you linked.…
      eganist on HN
  • Collaborate on maintaining the list of responses

    From 1 comment
    • Hey sivaram636, it'd be fun to collaborate on maintaining this list of responses & how it evolves over time. We've built a quick UI that shows the same dataset & would be…
      denster on HN

Questions

  • Does a similar site exist for sales scripts

    From 1 comment

Alternatives named

  • marketingexamples.com for sales scripts

    From 1 comment

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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