Charlie Franklyn’s Post

Overwhelmed by the endless stream of emails that eat away at your team’s time? That’s a problem we’ve been thinking about deeply. Managing customer emails—especially when they span billing queries, tech support, and general inquiries—takes a toll on productivity and response quality. So, we built something simple yet impactful: an AI-powered email responder. Here’s what it’s doing for teams so far: Automatically categorizes emails (Billing, IT Support, etc.) Handles repetitive queries in minutes Saves 70% of the time teams used to spend on manual email sorting Improves customer experience by speeding up responses We’ve already seen some exciting results: "It’s streamlined our process so well that we now focus more on solving real customer issues." – Aniket, Innovate Labs We’re inviting early adopters to experience it first. The best part? You can try it for free for 14 days. If this feels like something your team needs, comment “I want this” below, and we’ll get you started.

These hacks will 10x🚀 your productivity! Become a Prompt Master with these 5 Tips 1. Be specific and clear: Outline what you want, including specific elements or constraints. 2. Provide context: Give background information to understand the prompt. Example: "Write a job description for a software developer at a tech startup." 3. Ask open-ended questions: Encourage detailed responses. Example: "What strategies can improve customer satisfaction?" 4. Include examples: Provide samples of the desired response. Example: "Write a product review like this one: [example review]." 5. Keep it concise: Be specific but avoid unnecessary details. Using these tips can help create prompts that yield high-quality, relevant, and detailed responses. #PromptEngineering #AIGeneration #ContentCreation #BusinessStrategy

Here’s the deal: Your support team is drowning in tickets. And we both know that most of those tickets are so repetitive they make watching paint dry seem exciting. (I’m talking about password resets, basic how-to questions, and status updates that have your agents contemplating a career change.) After spending decades in customer support and seeing the evolution from email to chat to AI, I can tell you with absolute certainty: We’re at a watershed moment and ticket deflection is a magical thing! Read my latest article published in "Cubed" (link in first comment)

As software developers, this is an interesting challenge we sometimes see. Us tech guys rarely talk about this, but there is only so much software and automation can do - at some point people have to get involved! How do you make sure these interactions go well? Training is number 1. Be sensitive to customer problems, do what you say you will do, and give effective feedback. Many customers are upset when they call because they anticipate a bad experience. If it's a good experience, attitudes change fast! Next time you're looking at the technology, take a look at the human factor too - you might be surprised what you're missing! #customerserivce #tech #software

Running Coram AI has taught me valuable lessons about customer support. Our customers love our support team. Even with rapid customer growth, we haven't needed to expand our support team. You would think more customers mean more support staff. We've learned that support issues are product issues. Reducing software bugs reduces tickets. Adding features and controls without making the product clunky reduces confusion. We've enabled customers to unblock themselves. Having excellent documentation has been helpful. With LLMs and foundation models, we've created an easy-to-use chatbot. It can answer deep technical questions instantly, often with step-by-step instructions and helpful videos. This helps customers feel supported even without direct contact. Speed to resolution is key. I review every support ticket and customer question. Being hands-on allows me to quickly identify and fix gaps in our software and documentation. This approach is part of our culture of customer support through automation, not just manpower. Any other early-stage startups trying this?

Three scrappy but powerful ways even the smallest of teams can gather customer experience insights: 1️⃣ Auditing Sales Calls Ask your sales team if you can sit in as a silent observer. This is a goldmine for understanding what prospective customers are looking for. Listen closely to their questions and pain points—what problems are they hoping your product will solve? 2️⃣ Customer Support Ride-Alongs If you’re not already listening in on CS calls, start yesterday. There’s a wealth of data here. What common issues are users facing? What uses are they finding for your product? Understanding these can reveal both pain points and potential opportunities for new features. 3️⃣ Leveraging Early Access Users Proactively engage with your early access or beta users. Ask for a commitment to providing weekly feedback. You can use methods like email surveys or even ask them to maintain a journal. Consider setting up a dedicated communication channel, such as a Slack or Discord server, for realtime feedback. Customer discovery is a cornerstone of agile product development, and opportunities for it abound no matter what size or stage your company is. Whether you're a founder CEO or a new engineering hire, investing a few hours each month in learning from your customers is one of the most valuable uses of your time.

People will always find the most efficient way to hit a target. That can lead to some unintended consequences: • You goal your Marketing team on the # of leads generated and end up with a lot of low-quality SMB leads that don’t convert • Facebook uses engagement to decide which posts should be shown to more people and you end up with click bait and rage bait • Schools evaluate teachers based on how their students are doing on tests, so the teachers start “teaching to the test” You can’t really blame people for doing this; it’s your job to set the right targets (and therefore incentives), and their job to find the optimal way to hit them. As a result of these dynamics, there’s a saying that once a metric becomes a target, it’s no longer a good metric; this is also known as Goodhart’s Law. But there are ways to address this. For example, you can pair metrics together to prevent people from over-optimizing for one thing. When I started at Uber, we only had targets for the reliability of a market. Not surprisingly, Operations Managers would spend like crazy on driver incentives to hit these targets. Only once they also got a target for the cost per trip, they would start prioritizing efficiency. Similarly, measuring your customer support team only by the number of cases they solve is ill advised; instead, combine a productivity metric like “cases solved per hour” with a guardrail on customer satisfaction. Metrics are not the problem; it’s how we operationalize them. __ 👉 If you want to go deeper, check out my full blog post on how to design better metrics at OperatorsHandbook[dot]com

Customer success was the ugly duckling of tech 🦆 Under-resourced. Overlooked. Neglected. Ignored. Companies fired their CS teams in 2023 to save $. Then they started bleeding out in 2024. Customer Success is a revenue organization. It just took a recession to prove this. P.S: Check out the top 10 CSM interview questions here: https://lnkd.in/e3YtgcGh

Yes! Your customer service team can make or mar you! What makes a customer remain with you asides having a good product is your customer service. .. In a saturated space like the tech space, you need to stand out by providing great customer service and you will see your customers stay with you, even if there is a downtime on your platform. .. Your customer service team needs to be trained continuously and they need to know the basic tech skills that can help streamline operations and boost productivity .. We are passionate about the growth of startups and are offering a one month hands on training on *Basic Tech Skills to boost productivity* this class is for those that want to boost their productivity come 2025, it's for tech beginners, customer service reps, virtual assistants and anyone ready to learn the tech basics .. Comment class and a link will be sent to your dm ... #customerservice #techcustomerservice #fintechinnigeria #smallbusinesses#virtualassistant#techskills#techincanada#techinuk#techtraining

Is your knowledge base leaving customers frustrated and support agents overwhelmed? 🤔 You're not alone. Most companies struggle to create truly effective self-service resources. But it doesn't have to be that way. I've compiled 15 game-changing tips to transform your knowledge base from a neglected afterthought into a customer support superpower. You'll learn how to: → Structure content for maximum findability → Harness AI and automation to work smarter → Analyze and optimize performance → Foster cross-team collaboration The results? Happier customers, reduced ticket volume, and empowered support agents. Ready to unlock the full potential of your knowledge base? Check out the full article to start implementing these powerful strategies today. #KnowledgeManagement #KM #CustomerExperience #SelfService #MatrixFlows #AIforBusiness