Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web episode 56, and it's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. Today, we are talking about hiring help for customer support. And this is kind of a continuation, a part two, if you will, following up on last week's episode where we talked about leveraging other people. So today, we're really gonna get into the specifics and especially how it relates to hiring help when it comes to customer support. So as always, I am Brian.

Jordan Gal: 00:39

And I'm still Jordan. And, yeah, look we're looking forward to this. It's it's very relevant for both of us. And

Brian Casel: 00:46

Yeah. It's it's funny because we we talked about doing this episode last week, and you were thinking about hiring a customer support person. And I was like, you know, I I've already hired two. So, yeah, let's talk about that. But then all of a sudden this week, it it dawned on me like, woah.

Brian Casel: 01:03

Woah. Woah. I need to hire a third person. Like, things are getting out of hand in in our customer support tickets. So it's like perfect timing.

Brian Casel: 01:10

I actually I'm interviewing applicants today and tomorrow, so it's, yeah, good time.

Jordan Gal: 01:15

And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, our conversation has an effect on it because maybe you would have been willing as what I have to accept more pain, and not thought about hiring right away. But then once you get the thought injected into your mind that you can hire and maybe you should, then every bit of pain reminds you of it, and it just gets you to the point of, okay. It's it's just it's time. I don't wanna do this anymore. Something needs to change.

Jordan Gal: 01:42

And then once it's implanted in your mind, then all of a sudden becomes a a reality. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to get into more of these details. Before we do so, why don't we give a quick update? Brian, what have you been up to?

Brian Casel: 01:55

Let's see. So speaking of hiring, I last week, I talked about how I'm looking to hire a developer to work with me on a lot of restaurant engine stuff, a couple other projects ongoing. So a lot of great feedback. I've been kinda looking through a couple of the applicants so far and a few really awesome people. I mean, a lot of awesome people out there.

Brian Casel: 02:17

I'm I'm really excited about this. It's actually gonna be very difficult to go through and and and and make a decision on that. But, a few people who listened in last week, emailed me and and and asked about the position, and I realized I didn't share the, the link to the to the job application. And so I've got a whole description of of what I'm look of who I'm looking for and what they're what you're gonna be doing as as the developer. That you can check out at cashjam.com/developer.

Brian Casel: 02:47

And there's the whole description there, and then there's also the the form, the application form, which I'll be I'm gonna be looking over those things probably in February, looking to start doing interviews somewhere around in like, February, maybe even getting into March depending how the schedule goes. So, yeah, that's that's been awesome. And then and then, yeah, this week, I I was not really planning on doing it this month, but it's becoming pretty apparent that I need to get a third customer support person onto the team, like, ASAP just because our our tickets are getting really out of hand. We've we've had and this kinda comes from the holidays. We've we've had, like, a backlog of I mean, we had a whole string of new clients come in right before the New Year, and and my team took took off a couple days over the holidays, and and I was gone.

Brian Casel: 03:39

And and also one of my teammates is, like, shifting their hourly schedule. So things are just all kinda crazy right now. And, yeah, customers are complaining. You know, they're they're not getting their questions answered fast enough. They're you know, a few people have asked for refunds, which is a huge warning bell.

Brian Casel: 03:56

So so yeah. Gotta get this third person in there. And then, I mean, January was supposed to be it is, you know, supposed to be me working on our sales funnel. As I talked about, it's like a major number one goal for this year. I am working on that.

Brian Casel: 04:11

I've got a couple of things working now. Some some like ad campaigns and some new educational content and videos and and whatnot that we've put out. And those are going okay. I'm I'm I'm learning some things. I'm I'm figuring things out.

Brian Casel: 04:27

I'm making a few mistakes in in optimizing this kind of stuff. But, yeah, just trying to get get everything at least established this month in January so that I can look back in February and say, okay. Now now I've learned from all the initial mistakes. Let's let's refine this and get the right pieces in place. But, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to focus on that stuff, but the I'm just getting so sidetracked by managing the customer support.

Brian Casel: 04:57

Like, I'm I'm not really doing customer support. Actually, yesterday, I had to hop in on a few tickets for the first time in months, which is another big red flag that, like, okay. It's time to hire someone. I probably should have done it earlier. But, yeah, just trying to struggle with with the focus on pushing the marketing, but at the same time putting out fires and making sure my team is all in order.

Brian Casel: 05:21

So that's what's happening.

Jordan Gal: 05:22

And I I hear that, and I'm so envious. You you haven't done a support ticket in in months? Like, you know? That's that's sounds amazing and, you know, to to to keep it in check, to keep it relative, in in the right perspective.

Brian Casel: 05:37

Yeah. Sometimes I Great

Jordan Gal: 05:39

great place to to to be. Like, okay. Now you're sliding a bit backwards, and you you need to hire someone else. But the fact that you have not dealt with customer support in that long is man, that's like that that's my goal right now.

Brian Casel: 05:49

Yeah. It it has been working out fairly well for a while, but I I would say that my you know, I I I would self criticize here saying, you know, I've been a little bit too hands off with this with the customer support system and and our tickets. And I have a lot of trust in my team, and they're awesome. I know that they do a really good job. But sometimes, I I just really don't read any of the tickets and any of the updates, and I'm I'm left a little bit out of the loop.

Brian Casel: 06:20

And that was pretty apparent in these last two weeks where, like, three or four customers at the same time all all complained. And it's like, how was I not alerted to this earlier? And and it's because I'm a little bit too out of touch.

Jordan Gal: 06:32

You know? So Tricky. That that does not necessarily mean you need to get in there and see more of what's happening. It just means you you need to work on it, improve it.

Brian Casel: 06:41

Mhmm. Cool. One more thing I wanted to mention today. My friend Adam Clark, he runs the he hosts the the gently mad podcast, which is really great podcast. I was on the earlier version of it.

Brian Casel: 06:55

He kind of re rebooted and relaunched it recently. Anyway, Adam is he's like an expert podcaster. By the way, we've gotta get him on this show. I was really impressed with how he he relaunched his gently mad show about a month or two ago. And like within four weeks, he had like 50 iTunes reviews on the new and noteworthy list in iTunes.

Brian Casel: 07:16

Just like did everything perfectly right. Like, he he lined up all the right guests, and he prerecorded like 20 shows before he even launched it, and like, you know So a

Jordan Gal: 07:27

a pro. Not not not like the two two amateurs here on on this show.

Brian Casel: 07:31

Exactly. Like, this guy really knows what he's doing. Anyway, Adam is he's currently launching. He's currently in this prelaunch of a new course called Irresistible Podcasting. And, I mean, to be on I don't, like, plug stuff like anything, but this is one guy who if I were to try to learn podcasting, and I do go to him with all my podcasting questions, he's definitely the guy to learn from.

Brian Casel: 07:54

And I think you can check that out. Oh, he has like a presell that ends this Sunday. What's this Sunday? Like, January 13 or fourteenth, something like that?

Jordan Gal: 08:05

I think today is the fourteenth, but, you know

Brian Casel: 08:08

I'm I'm lost on the count. It's like the eighteenth.

Jordan Gal: 08:10

Yeah. The eighteenth

Brian Casel: 08:10

is is anyways, yeah, you can check that that out over at avclark.com/course.

Jordan Gal: 08:16

Nice. Sounds like the the the right type of person to to learn from. Yeah. Totally. We're we're we're far from pros, We're we're definitely having having fun, but there's definitely a level of competence you can see on on some people that that really, you know, focus on on podcasting.

Jordan Gal: 08:32

That's it's just impressive to see. I'm check that out.

Brian Casel: 08:35

Yeah. So, Jordan, what are you what are you up to?

Jordan Gal: 08:37

My quick update is, you know, a little bit of shame, a little embarrassment, a little self flagellation. It's so the the real update is I am overwhelmed and, you know, kind of annoying to admit that, but it's just it's just the truth. And I just find myself stressed and, like, taking deep breaths, you know, and, like, going outside for a quick walk. So I'm just trying you know, ever since going all in on Cardhook and putting everything else to the wayside, I now I'm just so focused. I wanna get so much of it done and trying to do all of it at the same time.

Jordan Gal: 09:18

And right now, it's all falling, you know, almost entirely on me. It's just it's just stressful because I just see what I'm getting done each day and what I wanna do, and it's like, I don't know how to reconcile those two. I don't

Brian Casel: 09:31

know how Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 09:32

You know, what I wanna get done is ever gonna get done if if I keep doing things this way. I mean, this that's really what leads us into this conversation today about hiring support because, you know, as a business person, as a bootstrapper, you you know or you should know what the most important thing to work on is. You know what will move the business forward dramatically and that's what you should be working on. So while I'm doing all this work, all this manual building stuff, all this customer support, all all of this stuff that is not what I should be working on, when I look over to the side, I'm like, oh, I should be building a partnership with e an ecommerce platform and doing content and getting onto more interviews. Like, that is gonna attract sales and new customers.

Jordan Gal: 10:22

That is, like, 10% of my time, and the 90% is all the stuff that maintains the business but doesn't really move it forward. So that Yeah. That has to change. So Cool. So I have been making good progress on some of these things like partnerships, which I'm very excited about.

Jordan Gal: 10:40

And, hopefully, over the next few weeks, you know, those things will start to come together to the point where it actually makes sense to talk about them in more detail. But it's just very, very obvious at this point that if I want to switch the eighty twenty to working 80% on the important stuff instead of 20% on the important stuff, then I need to start putting the pieces in place like customer support, like presales support, all these things that can be achieved that I don't have in place now. Cool. Yep. Besides that, my plug for the day is, you know, everyone's buying tickets for MicroConf.

Jordan Gal: 11:18

Everyone's Everyone's getting excited about going to Vegas. I just had lunch with a bunch of guys here in Portland who, like, met at last year's MicroConf. So, you know, very excited. So in thinking about it, I went back to the videos from prior years, which are phenomenal. And one in particular, I've seen it before, but seeing it again, you know, things change, your mind changes, whatever it is, I was just blown away.

Jordan Gal: 11:41

The the quality of Jason Cohen's talk at MicroCon from, I believe it's two years ago. Yeah. 2013. I think I think the it's called how to build the perfect bootstrap business. And this is, like, the best sixty minutes of content I have come across for bootstrappers.

Jordan Gal: 11:57

It's just a little bit of everything, little bit of pricing, little bit of market, little bit of sales, little bit of the big picture, you know, coming coming from someone who really knows their stuff.

Brian Casel: 12:06

I gotta catch up on that one. I I don't remember whether or not I've I I don't think that I actually watched that one. I've seen some of the videos, and I was at last year's microconf, but

Jordan Gal: 12:15

Huge mistake. Huge. Yeah. So after I saw it on, like, I I gotta email this guy. Like, that that was just, you know, something you just see, and you're like, thank you very much for for actually doing that.

Jordan Gal: 12:26

Cool. So let's jump into the topic, but do we have more smart people?

Brian Casel: 12:31

Yes. Do. Leaving options, reviews? Highly intelligent folks.

Jordan Gal: 12:34

Unbelievable, our audience.

Brian Casel: 12:36

One guy goes by the name of Osprey. He says, always valuable, five stars. Consistently provides intelligent, actionable advice. I don't usually do reviews, but this is such a useful free resource for small and possibly medium businesses. Great ideas and practical examples that I put to use in my small business.

Brian Casel: 12:55

Thanks, guys. Well, thank you, mister Awesome. Or or miss I can't tell Osprey.

Jordan Gal: 12:59

Thank you very much. That's awesome.

Brian Casel: 13:01

Another one from Jason Resnick. We recognize that name. Bootstrap Web, the mastermind of web businesses. Five stars. He says, if you own a business and you're not listening to this, then you aren't doing justice to your business.

Brian Casel: 13:18

Brian and Jordan share their experience, both good and bad. Hearing from their experience allows you, the business owner, valuable insights into how successful businesses are doing it and and not doing it. Mostly not doing it,

Jordan Gal: 13:31

I think. Yeah. You know, I I feel like we get a lot of feedback on all all the not doing it. Like, the admitting what's wrong, what's not working, what we did that was wrong. So

Brian Casel: 13:40

yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Jordan Gal: 13:41

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 13:41

And it goes on. Their honesty and transparency is refreshing because it shows the toughness of running a bootstrapped business. Listen now if you aren't already. Very true. It is it is a tough game out here.

Jordan Gal: 13:53

Well, it ain't easy. Thank you. Those are some awesome iTunes reviews. Thank you very much, guys. That that's humble.

Brian Casel: 14:00

Mhmm. Always appreciate it. Thanks, guys. So let's get into it. So we are talking about hiring help for customer support.

Jordan Gal: 14:07

Yes. So, you know, where where do we start here? Right? The the the should we talk about the bigger issue? Like, what leads us to this place?

Brian Casel: 14:16

Yeah. Like, what is this big problem that we're trying to solve when when we're getting ready to do customer support. I think you you really expressed a lot of it in in your update today, you know, just getting overwhelmed with with with everything that's going on. But one thing that I I wanna know before we even start talking about any of this, I've I've had this question a lot, from from readers of the blog, and I I wrote an article about this over a year ago. I forgot what it was called.

Brian Casel: 14:42

It was about cost it was that when you're starting something brand new, like, no customers yet or you're just thinking about idea, or you're just trying to get like an MVP or get some feedback or whatever, there's a tendency to say, you know, oh, I wanna launch this this plugin or this app or or this service or something, but I'm I'm worried that the customer support is gonna get out of hand. I I'm I'm worried about how I'm gonna handle the customer support load. I've heard people say that they're concerned with the customer support load before they have any customers. And that's just something that, like, you know, the first year for for me of of Restaurant Engine and back in when I was doing like word selling WordPress themes and whatnot, I get questions about it. Like, how do you handle customer support?

Brian Casel: 15:28

And I'm like, I don't know. It's a couple questions a week. It's not that bad. You know? So I I guess what I'm saying is, like, in the very early days, it's not it's not a problem that you have to be focused on.

Jordan Gal: 15:39

Yeah. It's barely even a problem. It's actually a good thing to actually talk to people and and have them complain to you about what's wrong. That's that's like Yeah.

Brian Casel: 15:46

You've gotta be hungry to talk to to more people who are asking for support and asking you questions.

Jordan Gal: 15:51

So I used to open up my CartHook email and just look at it and say, man, no one's emailing me. I got nothing going on in this inbox. No one even knows I exist. So, you know, a a real customer saying, hey. It's not working, and there's a problem here, there's a problem there.

Jordan Gal: 16:07

That's like, oh, shit. I'm in business. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's yeah.

Jordan Gal: 16:11

The the issues that we're talking about right now is, okay. In the next phase, you know, I've been doing customer support myself for the the past year, the same way you did it for Restaurant Engine for the first year. Now it becomes an issue when Right. You have enough customer support issues, enough customers to say, okay. Now, you know, and the way I described it to you earlier was it's it's like it's like a double prong.

Jordan Gal: 16:34

It's like two problems at the same time. Not only am I not spending enough time on the things that move the business forward, The the the you know, just as bad, the customers aren't getting great support. I'm, quote, too busy, and I'm not responding quickly enough, and I'm not figuring things out the right way, and I'm not being super responsive the way I used to be able to be. So it's not only hurting the business on one sense, it's also making the customers less happy. So clearly, you know, you you got you gotta do something.

Jordan Gal: 17:08

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 17:09

I mean, it it becomes an issue because it's holding you back as the founder from working on the things that are like you said, that, like, that need to be worked on to push the business forward. And then, yeah, on the other side, you've got customers who are not getting served. I mean, in my case, I I've had customer support help for almost two years now. And for the past year, I've had two people whose sole role is customer support. And then I had a third I have a third person working on presale support.

Brian Casel: 17:39

We'll talk about the distinction about on that in a minute. But now in January, I'm I'm in this my big problem that I'm trying to solve is that, like, the queue the support queue and the support load is getting overwhelming for my team. And I'm just realizing that maybe a few weeks too late. And and now I need to get just kind of get another set of hands in here to to reduce this time. And, I mean, you look at some warning bells and and and flags that are like, okay.

Brian Casel: 18:11

You know, need to hire someone. I mean, it's I've got customers who send a question, and then three days or four days later, they say, hey. Not sure if you received my question or not. Checking in on that. And I I mean, I've I've instructed my team, like, you've always gotta check-in and say, got it.

Brian Casel: 18:28

We're working on it. But, you know, even that gets backed up. The queue of that that stuff gets backed up. So and then even worse, I've got customers saying these are new customers who who signed up maybe twenty, thirty days ago. They're like, my website is not ready yet, and you promised it three weeks ago, and it's you know, what's happening?

Brian Casel: 18:49

It doesn't look like you've done anything and, you know, gotta extend their first a lot of times, I extend the first payment, beyond the thirty days. And Right. And that seems to help. You know, in in in rare cases, unfortunately, customers ask for, a refund and just cancel. And that's when it's like, fuck.

Brian Casel: 19:08

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 19:09

All that work upfront to finally get someone in and then to lose it after, you know, they're already hooked just to not be able to get them in the boat is, an unacceptable. Yeah. But those Yeah. Those sound like the right warning signs. Like, you know, if if a customer emails you a question and then they have to follow-up their own email to say, did you get this?

Jordan Gal: 19:27

Okay. We're not responding fast enough.

Brian Casel: 19:29

Right. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the problem is that customers aren't aren't engaged enough, and they don't reply to our emails to them, like, we ask them for materials or we ask them to answer a question or something. Right. But when it's the customer themselves who's trying to get a hold of us and we're not there, that's a problem.

Brian Casel: 19:46

So Right. And and yeah. Like, I and same deal for me. It's like, it's it's also pulling me away from things that like, I wanna be working on the sales funnel this week. And yesterday, I was pulled into some customer support tickets, do actually working on websites, something that I really have not done in the past year.

Brian Casel: 20:05

You know? And and, like, I shouldn't be working on that stuff. We we have systems in place. We have people in place. It we just don't have enough people, I think.

Jordan Gal: 20:15

So we find ourselves in this situation. The right? The reality of bootstrapping a business is you don't have a bunch of money in the bank, and you're not you'd the first thing to do is not just hire someone full time who's in the office with you and ask them to take care of it, and, hopefully, they have experience. Right? So what are the different options for someone in our situation?

Jordan Gal: 20:38

As a bootstrapper, what do you do? Like, how do you know when to hire someone? How do you know when to, you know, ease the load by working on things like documentation? So what, you know, what what are the options? What can we do in this situation?

Brian Casel: 20:51

Yeah. I mean, like, early on, again, I I wanna stress, like, how important it is that you as the founder, you do the customer support in the in the early months, maybe even the the first year. That's that's what I did, and you should do it. And and that's part of building the business in the early days. So you wanna be doing it.

Brian Casel: 21:09

But then as as we've been talking about, it's time to switch over and get hire some help. But another way to ease that burden is to improve the documentation and, you know, maybe, like, set up a knowledge base of the most frequently asked questions. And even if the customers are still gonna ask you the questions, at least if you have docu if you have it documented, you've got a quick canned response that says, like, we've got a whole video tutorial on that exact question. Click this link. So you don't have to retype the same stuff or re say the same things over the phone.

Brian Casel: 21:43

You know, some I I did a lot of early on, I did a lot of video tutorials, like screencasts of, like, how to work certain features in inside, the dashboard and whatnot. And that was good, and and a lot of those are still in use today. But, I also found that over time, we updated the dashboard, and then those videos become out of date. Right. So so I always try to at least have some written form.

Brian Casel: 22:10

And and on the ones that we have video, we also try to, like, document a step by step text version. But yeah. Like, the the documentation can help reduce the burden. I mean, in my in my experience, though, we've done some of it, but in general, I've been more I like, quicker to hire someone rather than focus just on the documentation because we still need someone there to to kinda shield me from all these tickets coming in so I can focus on other stuff.

Jordan Gal: 22:42

Right. And it's rare that these questions are so black and white that they're just a standard question with a standard answer. It's it's almost always somewhat unique that requires a look, and it requires a brain is really what it. Right? That that's the act that's the actual bottleneck is it requires a human being to look at it, think about it, and then respond a certain way.

Brian Casel: 23:04

Yep. The other thing, like, as a bootstrapper, the making the investment in in hiring anyone and hiring a customer support that Maybe this is, I don't know, just me, but it it's it's difficult because, like, when you're hiring a salesperson, you're hiring a marketing person, it's clear that you're hiring for a return on that investment. Like, this person will bring in sales. That's their job. But a customer support, you feel like, alright.

Brian Casel: 23:30

Well, I'm gonna start paying someone that I wasn't paying before, and this isn't directly tied to getting me more customers or increasing revenue. But, of course, you can look at it like you're improving your service, which improves customer happiness, which improves, you

Jordan Gal: 23:46

know Improves your business.

Brian Casel: 23:48

It it improves your I mean, it improves longevity of, like, customer lifetime. It Yeah. More likely to recommend you. I know that for us, like, people have been up until this week, really. People have been, like, wowed by how awesome our support has been, and that's been, like, a huge reason why why we get recommended so much.

Brian Casel: 24:05

Right.

Jordan Gal: 24:06

The big thing I see is it just takes the chains off of you. Right? I'm like a dirty, hungry, hustling animal. Like, lee you know, let me out. The more I'm staring at a computer, you know, and and trying to work out these these issues.

Jordan Gal: 24:22

And, you know, I love these people, man. These people jumped on early. I want them to get taken care of, but not at the expense of the the business, you know, not not working out. Yeah. Totally.

Jordan Gal: 24:34

That that's the biggest ROI that I see. Like, if I look at that and I say, in a given week, I I used to spend twenty hours of my time on people who have already signed up as opposed to someone else taking that, and all of a sudden that frees up, like, you know, 50% of my time to go grow the business in other ways, then that's the big ROI. But the the truth is the the x factors are that, you know, oDesk exists. Like, you we don't have to hire someone full time for forty hours a week forever. We can hire as we need.

Jordan Gal: 25:09

So Yep. I I would will not need forty hours a week in customer support. But at least now, we can actually hire someone for ten hours a week. Yeah. And and the expense, not that it's trivial, it's that it's not significant.

Brian Casel: 25:24

Right. And we'll we we've got a whole section coming up on how to hire and and Right. How much pay? Before we get into that, I think we should distinguish presales support and customer like, existing customer support.

Jordan Gal: 25:38

Yeah. Found found it interesting how how you did this.

Brian Casel: 25:42

Yeah. Well, I mean, in your case, like, what you're you're getting into this for the like, bringing on these team members mostly for those presales questions, or is it from your current batch of customers who are need help with, like, using the app, resetting their password, and and kind of questions like that? Like, where where's the big bottleneck for you right now?

Jordan Gal: 26:05

The big bottleneck in terms of the amount of time that I spend that I see as not a smart way to spend time is the, post like, the actual customers. Paying customers who are using the app and paying on an ongoing basis, those people I want to be taken care of well and not have me be doing it because if anything, I should be talking to the people before they buy. I should have regular contact with customers after they buy, but not day to day, a few hours a day on customer support.

Brian Casel: 26:41

But I looked at something like Cardhook, and it it seems so simple and straightforward. Right? Like, the initial setup, you've got it installed on their site. But then once it's installed, aren't they kind of good to go?

Jordan Gal: 26:52

Depends. Though not not always. Right. Right. We've we've made a a move into WooCommerce, and it has been great for us in terms of attracting new customers, but it has increased our support load because WordPress is just weird inherently.

Jordan Gal: 27:09

And there are plug in conflicts, and there are the issues that come up. And, you know, when it was just a few customers, it was rare. But now as we grow the customer base, it's relatively frequent. And so, you know, if if even each customer has an issue on average, like, it's not people don't have an issue every month. It's just that one person will have, like, two or three issues for two or three weeks in a row until we kinda get it figured out.

Jordan Gal: 27:37

And and that that that takes it takes time.

Brian Casel: 27:40

Yeah. That's the thing with WordPress is, like, anyone who runs a WordPress product knows You're need to it's like, because every customer has their own hosting environment, and and that's what makes it so difficult. You know?

Jordan Gal: 27:54

Yeah. One of my customers that I love, his hosting is just slow, and that is just causing issues. And and what am I supposed to tell him? Hey, buddy. You you need to improve your hosting or we can't work together?

Jordan Gal: 28:03

Like, maybe that maybe I will have to say that.

Brian Casel: 28:05

It it it's it's the weird hosting environments, but then it's also like people just hire these developers or they try to poke around themselves and they add all add all these customizations to their sites. Right. That they might be on the best host in the world, but they're using some weird custom plugin that's that's breaking everything. So it's But there is Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 28:23

It's it's is a distinction between the post sale and presale. But right now, it's almost a lot of the presale support is relatively straightforward and and can be done by other people. Right? Like, when someone signs up for a free trial, that's step one. We need to get them to launch their free trial, to launch the the abandoned cart campaign.

Jordan Gal: 28:48

Mhmm. So between that that is the most crucial part of the whole business. Once we get someone launched, man, it's very, very likely that they'll turn into a paying customer. So every free trial that comes in, we gotta we gotta get right after it and help what whatever we can possibly do to get them to launch their free trial because that's essentially the sale being made right there. If they launch their free trial, the confidence is so high that they'll turn to a paying customer that it's called presale customer support.

Jordan Gal: 29:17

They're not an actual paying customer, but that's actually the point at which the sale is made. Right. And and so

Brian Casel: 29:23

The the free trial to conversion.

Jordan Gal: 29:25

Right. So right now, if five free trials came in the door, I would be working with five people to make sure their free trials got launched. What what happens when it's five free trials every single day? Like, I'm gonna be doing nothing but that. So, yeah, there is there is a distinction, but I I guess Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 29:43

I have to figure out where that line is.

Brian Casel: 29:46

But That is interesting. I mean, I I make a distinction between those two. They're two completely different, like, departments. I mean, we all it's a small team and we all talk and and share information. But it's I I first hired customer support to help with setting up new customers who've already paid and they're on board, but we need to get them all set up and and happy.

Brian Casel: 30:10

So Right. That those were the first people that I hired. And then I I I still did the presales customer support myself for a long time before I hired help with that.

Jordan Gal: 30:20

Yeah. Which makes sense to me. Nobody can convince people to join on your service like like you can.

Brian Casel: 30:25

Yeah. Yeah. That and I maybe I should have delegated it sooner than I did, but but but also, like, there's a lot there's so much valuable research that you get from presales questions and and the objections that people are giving you. And then you can adjust your marketing. You could adjust your approach and and all the and and I made plenty of adjustments over the years just from learning what people are asking me.

Brian Casel: 30:50

And I did that, in a number of ways. A lot came through our live chat widget on our site, a lot of presales emails. And then and then, like, it wasn't even until after the first year that I started really being okay with, like, just hopping on the phone every day with with those presales customers.

Jordan Gal: 31:10

And and that that's how that's why the separation is what it is. It's once presales questions, getting them on board, and then once they decide to go with your service and pay and now they need to get their site built and all that, then it's a different set of people, a different person, a different set of issues. Is they are they're different personalities and different skills. They they really are.

Brian Casel: 31:34

Yeah. They definitely are. I have my one teammate who handles the presales consultation phone calls and email follow-up. She knows our product really well now, but she doesn't she's not a web designer or developer by any means. And, you know, she could use our product if she had to, but she doesn't.

Brian Casel: 31:53

She's her role is just to talk to people and explain the benefits and answer their questions. But as soon as they sign up, we we have got systems in place that all that person's all their information gets passed over to our customer support team. And those guys have web design development skills, and they can use WordPress. They could set up their sites. They can customize it.

Brian Casel: 32:13

They can edit images in Photoshop and and and do all that kind of stuff.

Jordan Gal: 32:18

Okay. Yeah. I'm I'm interested to see where where you spend more money. Right? Like, what what is the higher skill?

Jordan Gal: 32:27

Right? Because for for for my process, I see, like, it's lower skill to get the leads, and then it's higher skill to close. And then it's a little bit lower, but, like, medium level skill to do the support after they're on board.

Brian Casel: 32:41

Yeah. So part of what goes into that is their location. I mean, my teammate who handles the sales stuff is in The US, and my customer support team are in The Philippines. So

Jordan Gal: 32:55

Ah, yes. Well, also one is less time pressing than the other. Right? Sales questions need to be answered during the day In the evening, I timing,

Brian Casel: 33:03

I I I see I I really like to have everybody working every day of the week and and everybody onboard. Like, because customer support tickets are just as pressing, you know, as especially in in their first month when they're getting set up. But, yeah, I mean, in terms of, like, skill, I it's hard to say, like, the I don't know, like, a pay rate or whatever. I think they're probably somewhere on equal ground because the the sales consultation person and I've never come up with, like, these, like, fancy names for the, like, support ninja or, like, you know, customer happiness engineer. Like, we don't we don't do that kind of crap.

Brian Casel: 33:42

But she's very, very talented when it comes to communication and listening to to what customers are are saying. It that I I might be understating that. That there's a really awesome skill that only some people have, and that is to truly listen to what a stranger is telling you over the phone and then systematically address each of those points because so many people just like brush over them or they're not listening or they think they're saying something else. She's really, really good at that. And she's also really great

Jordan Gal: 34:17

for presales. Yeah. Right. So this is so you got someone who isn't just a closer who gets appointments and just closes them. You got someone who listens.

Jordan Gal: 34:30

I mean, what it is, it's closing, but for your environment.

Brian Casel: 34:32

Yeah. Actually, I wouldn't even really her role in in in our company here is sales and and closing and doing these consultations. But she when I hired her, she she's not a salesperson. Like, I don't even think she had any sales experience before this. I hired her to just kinda understand the product and answer these questions.

Brian Casel: 35:00

Because when we get consultations, they're inbound and they're and and they're they just have a couple of quite like, they're already interested. They they they just have a couple of questions that need answering. And I had been doing it myself for so long that I I put together, like, really detailed systems and and procedures for how to answer the most common questions and then a sequence of follow-up emails to send. And she kinda just knocks all that stuff out using a lot of the templates, but then also using her own listening and communicating and and that kind of stuff.

Jordan Gal: 35:33

Right. Now that she's up to speed. That's awesome. But

Brian Casel: 35:38

then the customer support team is a different set of skills, but still I I always look for great communicators. That's Right. Any role that I'm that I'm hiring for me has always been, if you communicate well and you demonstrate that from day one, you're right to the top of the list.

Jordan Gal: 35:55

Right. Because you can work it out. Yep. I recently hired a developer for a job and we're not communicating well, and it it just doesn't go. It doesn't go anywhere.

Brian Casel: 36:03

Yeah. It's so much more important than the actual development skills.

Brennan Dunn: 36:06

Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 36:07

Like, if you're able to ask me the right questions or ask the customer the right questions or just don't let one point go unaddressed. Like, if I ask you three or four questions in an email, you've gotta come back to me with exact answers to those four questions. And so many people, the majority of people will just kinda brush over two of them and maybe mention two of them. You know? Yep.

Jordan Gal: 36:32

Alright. So, I mean, that that makes sense to me. I don't know, like, what that means in reality for me, but I can see how the separation is is real. It's it's different personalities. It's it's learning a different set of issues.

Jordan Gal: 36:46

The the issues required to address concerns and answer questions and convince someone to give Cardhook a try, and this is why they should, and this is why it's no risk, and these are the benefits. That is just a different set of knowledge that someone needs to have as opposed to, hey. I got an order and the person purchased, but they told me that they got an email for an abandoned cart afterward anyway even though they finished the purchase. What's going on? Like, that's just a different thing.

Jordan Gal: 37:17

Like, oh, so that's just two different sets of skills and sets of knowledge to ask someone to put all of that together. Maybe that's not necessary.

Brian Casel: 37:26

Yeah. No. I I do think you should have two separate people doing that. Right. And on the the other one about, you know, customer technical support issues, you should have a procedure.

Brian Casel: 37:39

Like, if that's a question that that comes up, like, more than three times. Right. Then there's a a common troubleshooting

Jordan Gal: 37:45

Right. There's, like, a troubleshooting procedure. Right. Step one, go to their account, pause all their campaigns, let them know that the campaigns are paused. This won't happen again while we're checking it out.

Jordan Gal: 37:55

Right? Like Right. That's so obvious. It's it's so obvious that that, you know, in my mind, it's obvious, but that needs to be communicated and documented.

Brian Casel: 38:04

Yeah. And on the other side, the presales side, it's it's about having it's just documenting the most commonly asked presales questions.

Jordan Gal: 38:12

Yeah. And the most

Brian Casel: 38:13

Documenting the yeah. And and the most common objections. Right.

Jordan Gal: 38:18

And then And the most compelling, you know, benefits and statements and offers.

Brian Casel: 38:24

Yeah. And I think your case

Jordan Gal: 38:25

like, how are different from

Brian Casel: 38:28

Well, I mean, I'm envious of your products because it is so simple. I mean, I'm sure it's more complicated than it seems, but it it does one thing. It does one thing really well. Whereas, part of our struggle, as great as my team is, all of them, like, they still have to escalate stuff to me because a customer asked some weird out of left field question, and we have to give them some kind of customized answer. And it's it's difficult.

Brian Casel: 38:55

Like, not everything falls into these canned responses. So.

Jordan Gal: 38:57

Yeah. And it's it's the same way for for any product. It's just how much of it is out of left field and how much of it falls within the the normal range. Yeah. Yep.

Jordan Gal: 39:08

Cool. So two different roles, presales, customer support. Now, like, let's get into you know, I'm I hire people on oDesk. I'm not a complete outsourcing newbie, but the thing that scares me is how do I get this done? How do I wrap my mind around having the confidence of having someone else most likely overseas be taking care of my my customers?

Jordan Gal: 39:35

Like, that that's a little, you know, it's scary. I can see how, okay, gradually over time, I keep an eye on it closely and I loosen it, but but that I think is the biggest mental hurdle to get over. How am I possibly gonna take everything that's in my brain about the product and put it into their brain so that they can actually do a good job taking care of my my precious customers?

Brian Casel: 39:56

Yeah. It's it it it is hard to get over that hurdle. I know that for me, when I first hired my my first customer support person, really, he was kind of like a do it all virtual assistant, and then he eventually became full time customer support. And so in the early days, I would forward my customer questions to him or their requests to to fix something or do something on their website. I would forward those to him.

Brian Casel: 40:21

He would do it on the website. He would send it back to me saying it's done, and then I would reply to the customer saying it's it's done. Right. So it's

Jordan Gal: 40:28

simple as possible.

Brian Casel: 40:31

Well, no. I mean, like, in the beginning, I didn't let them talk to customers. Right. But in the and that would only lasted, like, three or four months before I was before I

Jordan Gal: 40:41

It's like, okay. Let me get out of the way.

Brian Casel: 40:43

Yeah. And and it's also like at that time, we didn't even have Help Scout. Like, was all I I was using Gmail for at least the first year.

Jordan Gal: 40:50

Mhmm. Yeah. And I wanna get into

Brian Casel: 40:52

the stuff.

Jordan Gal: 40:52

The technology, we we should cover it at at the end because it's, you know, it's its own Yeah.

Brian Casel: 40:56

We'll we'll get into that. But, yeah, like, having the confidence to hire someone, I mean, you know, you you you won't have everything documented from day one. I mean, we still have stuff that's still undocumented. But, you know, I have, like, the most common things, you know, documented out in in a Google Doc or something and, like so so that and and at least save a couple of, like, canned responses.

Jordan Gal: 41:22

Like, in in their account?

Brian Casel: 41:23

Yeah. And the other thing that I did, and this gets into, like, how to train someone new is for several weeks, I b c c'd my new customer support person on every email that I was having with every customer.

Jordan Gal: 41:37

So that they can

Brian Casel: 41:38

see knows how I speak to customers, common questions, my common answers. The tone. Yeah. I like

Jordan Gal: 41:46

that. I like that. Yeah. If you look back at, you know, your inbox, look at my inbox, you you'll learn a lot about just the whole approach and tone and

Brian Casel: 41:56

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the other thing that I'll do is like someone brand new, they're starting on Monday. I'm gonna have someone starting on Monday. One of my very first tasks that I've given every new teammate is go through the last month of our Help Scout tickets and just read through them.

Brian Casel: 42:09

Just read them all. You know? Just see what what kind of things have been coming up and how we all respond to to customers and just get a feel for for how things get communicated.

Jordan Gal: 42:20

Yeah. That's that that that's great. I can definitely okay. So, right, it's a leap of faith. Like

Brian Casel: 42:26

Yeah. And and I mean, the trust factor, the this also gets into using software like HelpScout that allows you and everyone on your team to have access to the same inbox rather than giving a teammate their own email address that you Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 42:39

Not see.

Brian Casel: 42:40

You might still you might still have access to it, but it's a pain Yeah. You know log in to you know?

Jordan Gal: 42:44

Not gonna check it regularly.

Brian Casel: 42:45

Yeah. That Yeah. Right.

Jordan Gal: 42:46

That's pretty much you know, it's it's two things. A, as long as I can see some of the stuff and keep an eye on it for the first few weeks and then start to back out as the confidence builds, then I'm okay. And the the other part of that is, you know, we're trying to make a lot of money. Right? The the goal is to make millions of dollars.

Jordan Gal: 43:09

Right? You have to just be okay with the fact that you might lose a few customers here and there because the support isn't up to your personal standards, but you need the company to be successful to be able to employ people, to make you money for your family, for the you know, anyone who's investing, and that's that's the bigger picture. You owe it to yourself and to everyone around you to be okay with the fact that maybe you would be the best person to customer support, but you shouldn't be doing it. If that means you're gonna lose a few customers or not make people quite as happy as if you were doing everything, then you still have to do it.

Brian Casel: 43:46

Yeah. And I have a definite like, I I can really relate to that. The the first customer support guy that I had, I was kind of reluctant to to let go of that hands on control. And it took several months before I was I let him really talk to customers. The second customer support person by then, and this is like a year later, I I kinda threw her right into the mix.

Brian Casel: 44:11

Yeah. By by the like, the first week, it's really just like training, read up on stuff, watch us all do stuff. By the second week, I want them talking to customers.

Jordan Gal: 44:21

Right. If you don't know, don't make it up, then elevate it. But.

Brian Casel: 44:25

Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, you know, that kind of thing, what I what I learned with it is like, you gotta go into it knowing that people are gonna make mistakes. They're gonna say the wrong thing from time to time.

Brian Casel: 44:38

And they have to make those mistakes. Because then they have to learn from them, and then they're not gonna do it again. At least the good ones will. If they if they make the same mistake again, then they're not a good employee. You know?

Brian Casel: 44:50

So

Jordan Gal: 44:51

Yeah. That's just so the prospect of of having other people, like, help out customers and and allow, you know, you to focus on other things is just so exciting. Just even the thought of it. Like, the business you know, that's what we're trying to get to. We're not trying, at least personally, I'm not trying to build a business where everything depends on me.

Jordan Gal: 45:15

And so it's like these, like, little baby steps are just really exciting. Just the prospect of, you know, somebody else selling Cardhook and getting someone to say yes without you being involved is exciting. And and a customer emailing in with a problem and the problem being taken care of without your involvement, shit, man. That is really, really exciting.

Brian Casel: 45:36

Yeah. It it is it's a really great feeling for there's no doubt about it. I mean, when you see these customer tickets come in and then you see them get closed out and you haven't touched them, I mean, it's amazing. One more one more quick point on this, like, trust factor is you've gotta trust that your product is so valuable that your customers can put up with a little bit of a like, look, customer support, everyone agrees. It's gotta be as great as it can be.

Brian Casel: 46:06

You know, everyone knows that. And all of our favorite companies that we use, they all have rock star customer support. We get that. But at at the end of the day, they're gonna be some customers who just their their email took an extra day or two to get back to them or someone said the wrong thing and confused something. These things happen.

Brian Casel: 46:23

And you know what? I found, like, 90% of the time, the customer had no problem with it, and they completely understood and and and they had no problem. I mean, very few cases where that actually cost us up. I mean, I can't even point like on one hand, like cancellations because a customer service person said that no. I mean, a customer service person has never caused a cancellation.

Brian Casel: 46:48

That's absolute sure. And that's not gonna happen.

Jordan Gal: 46:50

Right? Which is remarkable as it is right there. Just just that statement is like, what are you worried about? What are you that worried about?

Brian Casel: 46:56

Yeah. And you gotta remember the fact that that customer paid you money for your product because your product gives them value. It solves some some pressing problem for them. And they're gonna put up with an extra day if they have to on the rare occasion because they still get value from your product. They're not gonna go cancel, but, you know.

Jordan Gal: 47:16

As long as your intention isn't to say, screw you, I just don't care, then Right. It's not something you have to worry about. Yeah. Quick story that I like to tell about the this side of things is when when my brothers and I were running the ecommerce store, at the very end, we talked about outsourcing customer support, a few times along the way, and we decided, you know, one of our big differentiators was our customer support, and it was it was phenomenal. And people noticed it, and we got a ton of comments, and it helped the business.

Jordan Gal: 47:48

But toward the end, as we were in the middle of the deal to sell the business, so, like, in the middle of due diligence, like, okay. We pretty much know this thing is gonna sell, and now it's just, you know, gonna take thirty days for all this stuff and legal and all that. Right then, we got like, once you well, you know, like, once you once you know you're gonna quit your job, like, going in every day drives you out of your mind. So this was the same thing. So we didn't wanna deal with the customer support.

Jordan Gal: 48:13

So then, only then, idiots, we finally outsourced customer support. And you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. We still made the same revenue that we expected to make, and it almost caused us to look at each other like, wait.

Jordan Gal: 48:30

The most painful part of this business, one of the big reasons we're selling this business, we we just took care

Brian Casel: 48:36

wanna sell it anymore.

Jordan Gal: 48:37

Right. We looked at each other. We're like, why? Wait a minute. Are we making a mistake?

Jordan Gal: 48:42

Because the part that we thought was so difficult to deal with, we just outsourced to, like, not even, like, the most amazing company. It was just it was a phone service company, and they just handled the phones, they did sales, they handled customer support. It was like, okay. Amazing. And even that lesson, that's not enough to carry over into what we're doing now, but I think Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 49:01

That's awesome though. It's I mean Yeah. Instructive, like, idiot. Yeah. Cool.

Brian Casel: 49:06

So Let's see a couple more of these questions here. I think find the right person Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 49:10

Alright. How do you how do you find them? Are are you an oDesk, like, evangelist? I I I am personally, but I don't know if this

Brian Casel: 49:16

is I too.

Jordan Gal: 49:17

The right thing.

Brian Casel: 49:18

I so I am too for certain roles. For certain like, so right now, I'm very much in oDesk. I I've got an an ad right now for for customer support in oDesk. I've got applicants coming through, and I'm going to hire someone through through oDesk. Cool.

Brian Casel: 49:34

For that. The one thing that I will say is that all of my team now, I have moved them off of oDesk after a few months of them being on it. And and now, I pay them directly with PayPal.

Jordan Gal: 49:46

Sorry, oDesk. But I'm I'm sure they they expect that to happen too too.

Brian Casel: 49:51

And and also I use an app called Time Doctor, which a lot of people might know that as like a productivity tool, but it's also a time tracking tool. And it actually does the screenshots and all the same things that oDesk does. I don't really look at the screenshots, but I have from time to time. But but anyway, it does all those same things. And I think recently, they just added an ability to pay through it, but I don't pay through Time Doctor.

Brian Casel: 50:16

I just have my I've got a procedure for my teammates to invoice me every two weeks, and I just pay them. But anyway, for oDesk like, I I still use oDesk to to find the applicants and to hire them, and I'll and I'll use and I'll pay them through oDesk for, like, the first couple of months.

Jordan Gal: 50:33

Right. That's one of the big attractions about oDesk. Paying people is just super easy. It's your credit card.

Brian Casel: 50:38

So you

Jordan Gal: 50:38

have to worry about $10.99 and this and that. So when when you move people off oDesk, does it complicate the payment, like international payments? Or do you just keep it simple credit card or PayPal or something, you know,

Brian Casel: 50:49

It's still that it complicates it in that I have to make sure I click pay them. Right. Click to pay them every time.

Jordan Gal: 50:57

Right.

Brian Casel: 50:57

Not not tipping. Which happens every two weeks. Whereas with oDesk, it's totally automated. It just comes out of my bank account. Right.

Brian Casel: 51:04

So I would have liked a more automated thing, but the economics of it are better. Because they've got the o oDesk fee and taking them off. We've saved the most of that fee by going to Time Doctor. And I what I did was because this usually happens like a few months into their into them being here. I kinda pass that savings onto them as like a a a small raise.

Jordan Gal: 51:29

Right.

Brian Casel: 51:31

So So

Jordan Gal: 51:32

so you go to oDesk, and do you post a job and make it public and give people tests? Or do you make it private and then only invite individual people that you have, like, researched and looked into? Or I usually go private, but.

Brian Casel: 51:48

Yeah. I post it. I it's I guess it's public. I guess you anyone can go on to oDesk and find it. It's in their directory or whatever to to find, like, open position for, you know, customer

Jordan Gal: 52:01

support. Then I'm sure you get flooded.

Brian Casel: 52:05

Actually, no. And I've been alright. So I put one ad out on, like, Monday of this week. Today today is Wednesday. So this is, like, two days ago I put this ad out.

Brian Casel: 52:18

And as of today, I think I have about, like, 25 applicants.

Jordan Gal: 52:25

Okay. So so a good response, but not not, you know, flooded with 50 or a 100?

Brian Casel: 52:30

Yeah. Not really flooded. I I put a lot of detail into the ad, and then I also put in oDesk lets you put in, like, qualifications Right. To help filter that. So I what did I do there?

Brian Casel: 52:41

I I I put, like, English speaking fluent, which is like the four out of five on that one. They must have billed at least one hour in oDesk.

Jordan Gal: 52:52

Do you do geographically specific?

Brian Casel: 52:55

Yeah. I for customer support, I'm very happy with Philippines for that role.

Jordan Gal: 52:59

So The English language is

Brian Casel: 53:01

a Yeah. So, you know, I'll select in Odesk, I'll select Southeast Asia, and that includes The Philippines and a couple of other random things. And still other people like India and Bangladesh and all these other things will still apply. I usually kinda just delete those out, and I only look at the Filipinos. What else?

Brian Casel: 53:24

Average rating on their profile, I I choose four and above.

Jordan Gal: 53:28

So these are the qualifiers that only allow those people that have the parameters that you set to be Yeah. I see it or contact you.

Brian Casel: 53:35

I think that you can still apply even if you don't meet those, but I think it shows like a little flag that doesn't meet Not a qualifier. Yeah. And then I I do read every single I mean, I immediately delete if they're not in The Philippines. But then all the all The Philippines, I do read every single applicant, everything that they write. And usually within thirty seconds of reading it, I can I can decide no or put them on the shortlist?

Jordan Gal: 54:02

Right. And do you do you ask them to write something specific or a paragraph or their thoughts or, you know, something that goes beyond, I'm interested. Check out my resume. Something that right. Because one of the big things is you're looking for the English written skills.

Brian Casel: 54:18

I'm gonna pull up my thing right now so I can tell you the questions that I asked. Yes. I do ask specific questions. I think I included about four. And and I do make them I say in the question, like, describe let me let me just read it.

Brian Casel: 54:35

I want them to to I want them to write about themselves and describe something to me so that I can hear how they how they communicate or how they answer the question. Do they do they answer exactly what I was asking and that sort of thing.

Jordan Gal: 54:50

Yeah. My my my experience in Odesk is I I go private, and then I just do the research on my end to invite the people that I wanna invite. But it's it's more like if I want a Shopify app built, then I'm gonna do research on like five or six Shopify app developers that have done certain things and similar things, and I wanna invite them. I don't want anybody.

Brian Casel: 55:13

I do invite people. I it's public, but then I also go the next step and I and I invite a I don't even take I used to spend a lot of time, like, looking through everybody's profile and inviting them. Right. But I don't do that anymore. Now, it's like I, you know, blanket.

Brian Casel: 55:30

I use the the filtering search tools. Like, I'll I'll look in only Philippines and and only

Jordan Gal: 55:37

Right. Four stars English language.

Brian Casel: 55:38

Yeah. Four stars, like and I might look at the tests, like, have scored in the top 30% for for WordPress or or for English speaking or or maybe HTML. I need them to know some HTML and CSS.

Jordan Gal: 55:52

But you don't go and read people's individual testimonials and look at screenshots of their previous work. Time or is it because you assume Yeah.

Brian Casel: 56:00

It takes more

Jordan Gal: 56:01

Right. The more people come in

Brian Casel: 56:03

Because all I'm doing at this point is I'm inviting people to apply for the job. And and I wanna make sure that I'm getting enough good applicants. So so I just make sure that I I I made all the filters, and I I I think on Monday night, tried to get like 40 invitations out. I just went, like, through the first four pages of the search results on those filters, and I invited four people. Alright.

Brian Casel: 56:30

40 people. But you still have to, you know, freaking go into each one and and manually invite them one by one. They don't have, a blanket bulk invite. But anyway, I I just took ten minutes and I invited 40 people. The other thing that with that is like, don't wanna spend too much time handpicking them that way because a lot of them are just not available.

Brian Casel: 56:48

Even if they look great, they're not gonna be available. So out of those 40 people who I invited, I think less than half of them even even applied. You know? But then then the next step is to is to is to go through the applicants and shortlist them. And I really like oDesk's feature for this, for organizing all the applicants, because you just click like shortlist.

Brian Casel: 57:18

And you can even hide or or x out. I I like that too. Like, they're in Bangladesh or somewhere else and just not right the right fit for this job, can just get them completely out of the list immediately. So I use the shortlist feature, and what I'm trying to do there is narrow it and keep that shortlist, like, very short. I I usually get that down to, four three or four people.

Jordan Gal: 57:42

As your top candidates?

Brian Casel: 57:45

Yeah. It's almost and and that's almost the easiest thing, because I can look through I can read a response from someone and in thirty seconds, I can I can usually tell, alright, you just ignored everything or your or or your grammar is so horrible that like not gonna work? Or you or you wrote really thoughtful answers and you do a little bit of research. I could see that you took more than ten minutes to write this. Qualifications.

Brian Casel: 58:15

Shortlist.

Jordan Gal: 58:16

Right. They're so easily, quickly apparent. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 58:19

It really is like night and day. And there's such a minority of the good applicants, you

Jordan Gal: 58:27

know. Nice, man. Yep.

Brian Casel: 58:28

There are really so few of them.

Jordan Gal: 58:30

Yeah. I'm I'm I'm gonna ask you for a little help on the, you know, the oDesk job description. Yeah. I mean, I've had a lot of practice with it.

Brian Casel: 58:41

Let me try to pull up these questions. I I don't I can't even really see where I can find those. I guess I'll just go to the applicants. One second. But actually, like, the way that I structured the job description was just a little blurb about who who I'm looking for and what the company does.

Brian Casel: 59:01

And then I got a list of your primary responsibilities will include. I've got about six or seven things.

Jordan Gal: 59:07

So you give them a clue on, like, okay. Well, here's what your normal day to day is gonna be like. These are the most important things.

Brian Casel: 59:13

Like email and chat and and chat communication with clients, inputting content into websites, making customizations with HTML and CSS, and a couple other things. And then requirements, like exceptional English communication written and and email and chat, front end development skills, HTML, CSS, experience working with WordPress. So I specify that stuff. And then Right.

Jordan Gal: 59:34

Not only do you have to find the right person, but hiring the wrong person for a week or two, that sucks. Right? That just that just gonna suck energy and time out of your, you know, out of out of your efforts. Efforts. So So it's it's kinda kind both of both at at the the same same time.

Jordan Gal: 59:48

Time. Not Not only only do do you you really really wanna wanna find find the the right right person person with with the right specifications, you really don't wanna hire the wrong person because that's just, you know, that just cost time and money that that you don't wanna waste.

Brian Casel: 59:58

Yeah. Totally. And I I can't even pull this up right now. But, like, the type of questions that I ask are, like, like, describe two or three recent projects that you worked on with WordPress and and tell me what your role was in those sites and provide links if possible.

Jordan Gal: 01:00:12

I see. So only only people who are serious about this job are kinda take the time to write that out.

Brian Casel: 01:00:18

Yeah. And I'm not asking for like a whole essay. I'm just I I maybe I wrote like briefly describe something like that. You know, send me a link and just show me, okay. I was responsible for this, this, and this.

Brian Casel: 01:00:29

And like, I've had a couple of really good applicants say, here's a link. I I did the HTML coding and CSS for this section of the site, but this other section over here, another freelancer did that, just so you know. Like, describe that, and and that's a huge win.

Jordan Gal: 01:00:46

Yeah. And you're reading the words they put in the sentence and how they convey it. Yeah. Email email is an art. You know, getting the right tone and the right meaning across and picking your words carefully is really an art and a skill.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:01

And if someone can demonstrate that, you know, in a 300 word response to a job description, then you could probably mold them. If they have the basic skills and qualifications, you can bring that person up to speed on your particular company and your service to the point where, you know, they will soon be better than you are at at their particular task.

Brian Casel: 01:01:21

Yeah. The other thing that, I don't think we have it listed here, but we should probably talk about is hours, and the schedule.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:27

Yeah. Hours. Hours and and and the money. Right? So start off with Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:31

With hours. What do you mean by hours? How many hours a week or, like, the the time of day that they work or or both?

Brian Casel: 01:01:36

The time of day and both. For me, I I I do want them working for the most part on US business hours. When I'm awake, I want them awake and working on stuff. And I've have found, in our case, that that is very beneficial so that we can go back and forth and discuss things.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:56

In in real time instead of entirely over email.

Brian Casel: 01:01:59

Yeah. And that means that the guys in The Philippines are working their night shift. They're they're up all night.

Jordan Gal: 01:02:04

Right. And and you you compensate for that, I'm assuming, by, you know, a little bit paying a little bit more or paying more consistently or, you know, if Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:02:13

I I do pay a little bit more, I think, than than what most are paying like a like a virtual assistant or, you know, with with these kind of skills.

Jordan Gal: 01:02:21

Right. But you're dependable. You you've been Yeah. For a long time, so it's that that's valuable.

Brian Casel: 01:02:27

Yeah. And I think another benefit within the oDesk system is that it shows that I've billed a lot of hours, like my profile as as a as a hire Right. Right there as a company. So I think that attracts a lot of good candidates too.

Jordan Gal: 01:02:40

Yeah. It's actually a valuable asset to have. A great oDesk track record means you can Yeah. Can hire anyone, anytime, whenever you want.

Brian Casel: 01:02:47

Yeah. And my team has given me good reviews and all and all that stuff. So yeah. But the hours, like, I I do want them working overnight their time and and working daytime for us. Other like, hiring other people, like, that's not an always a requirement.

Brian Casel: 01:03:03

Like, in the past, when I would hire contractors to work on, like, a client web design project, I was totally fine with them working whenever as long as they get it done in in time for the deadline.

Jordan Gal: 01:03:12

Right. It's not about

Brian Casel: 01:03:13

This is this is different. This is, like, day to day manning the customer support desk. Right. We need

Jordan Gal: 01:03:19

for to every single email to not be responded to for eight hours. Like, it's Yeah. Right. Maybe Yeah. Sometimes that happens.

Jordan Gal: 01:03:28

That's fine. But as a as a rule of thumb, you know, someone emails you at 1PM eastern time and they don't get a response 11:00 eastern time every single time every day, that's that's not really acceptable. So depending on your situation, that might enter the equation.

Brian Casel: 01:03:44

Yeah. And that's also, you know. Also have a lot of collaboration in between in the team. So myself and my other team who's in California, we're throughout the day, we're constantly like, oh, you know, do you have this this thing for that client? Or or this client just asked a question, can you guys handle that?

Brian Casel: 01:04:01

Like, they're we're we use Slack to do How how is that?

Jordan Gal: 01:04:05

Is like is that good? As good as as it sounds?

Brian Casel: 01:04:08

It's great. I mean, we have three I have three teammates on it now and plus myself. And that's what we use to to ping each other with questions and to make sure that we're all kind of looped in on these discussions. You know? It's Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:04:19

It is good.

Jordan Gal: 01:04:21

Yeah. It's it's it's amazing that I yeah. All all this is kinda blowing my mind just because I'm I'm just projecting forward a thirty days now to, like, to have someone that I can just chat with and be like, can you get back to this person? Can you do this? Can you get me that?

Jordan Gal: 01:04:36

You know, here's a similar situation. See if that works for them. Like, it's just gonna accelerate the the capacity of the company. Like, the amount of work and value the company can provide is just gonna start to stretch outward.

Brian Casel: 01:04:51

Yeah. And just one thing, and I this just reminds me of what like, two years ago when I was just getting started with having my first virtual assistant or support person. I don't really do this so much anymore, but if you're just getting started with it, anyone listening, a really good tip. If you have them working on like a regular weekly schedule, every Friday or at the end of every week, make it make them give them a repeating task to send you a recap email of what they worked on for the week. And what this does is it for the week, like and just a couple bullets, like, these are the main things that I did, and here are some details about that just just so you're aware of what how I spent my time.

Brian Casel: 01:05:30

And so there's a few things about this. Number one, it obviously keeps them accountable and and responsible for what they're doing. Number two, it keeps you informed as the founder and and like, you know, but it also helps you trust and it helps you step away and start to focus on other things because you you know that every Friday, you're gonna get that email and you're gonna be in the loop. You don't have to look over their shoulder every single day because then you're you're wasting time. You're you're not working on that marketing campaign.

Brian Casel: 01:06:01

You're just babysitting, and you don't wanna be doing that.

Jordan Gal: 01:06:03

Yeah. That's not that's not the point. I I like that. End of the week recap. I also think it's very beneficial for them to look back at the week as opposed to just kind of, you know, finish up work for that day and just move on and not not think back about what happened.

Jordan Gal: 01:06:16

And yeah. Mean, the truth is all of us should be doing that in one way or another so you're not just, living and working minute to minute that you're reflecting on the past week, what worked, what didn't work, what were the really important things that you accomplished, and what were the things that you did a lot of work on that weren't that important? So money. Let's talk about the dollars. Right?

Jordan Gal: 01:06:39

It's it is unbelievable the affordability of of doing this. It is it's absurd.

Brian Casel: 01:06:47

Yeah. It it

Jordan Gal: 01:06:48

It's not pennies, but the ability to hire someone for ten hours a week at you tell me what, you know, what to expect a high quality customer support person, you know, multiply that by ten hours a week times 4.3, whatever it is, and to pay that much. Right? Let's call it you you tell me what what do you expect and what should I expect to pay?

Brian Casel: 01:07:12

I mean, it depends how many you know, it definitely, like, depends on on the rate and the number of hours. I usually start someone at twenty five hours a week, and then they go up to forty in a in a couple of months. Like, my two people now are are at forty hours a week, and I'm hiring someone new this week who will start at twenty five hours

Jordan Gal: 01:07:34

a Okay. So 40, once you get there on a per hour basis, it's cheaper?

Brian Casel: 01:07:41

No. I still pay them the same.

Jordan Gal: 01:07:43

So it's the same.

Brian Casel: 01:07:44

Same rate. I just I just ramp it up as the demand gets gets higher.

Jordan Gal: 01:07:47

Okay. Yeah. I I figured I would start out with ten or twenty hours a week and kinda test things out. And as the confidence grew, you know, solidify it more twenty hours every single week until more was needed, and then it could, you know, stretch outward from there until that person was kinda maxed out.

Brian Casel: 01:08:05

I mean, you know, I I and like, I don't wanna get really into all the all the dollar amount rates right now, but

Jordan Gal: 01:08:11

Yeah. I know personally, I got for me

Brian Casel: 01:08:14

I'm sorry. I need to be a little vague here, but No. Please. I would say that I pay a little bit more than what most people pay Filipinos. But even that is still certainly well below what you'd pay someone in The US.

Brian Casel: 01:08:26

There's no doubt about it. Right.

Jordan Gal: 01:08:28

I'm figuring somewhere between 5 and $15 an hour. Somewhere in that range. $6 an hour is someone who's less experienced. $12.13, $14 an hour is someone who's much more experienced. So if you call that an average of $10 an hour for, call it, twenty hours a week, two hundred bucks a week times four is $800.

Jordan Gal: 01:08:49

It's not chump change. It's not nothing. It is an expense, that is significant. It right? It's a real line item in your math every month.

Brian Casel: 01:08:58

It it really is. There there's no doubt about it. It's it's it's a real expense, especially once the hours start start adding up. And

Jordan Gal: 01:09:04

I just see I just see no choice. I just look at that, and I say twenty hours a week that I will be able to focus on. Maybe not in the beginning, I'll do a little bit of babysitting, but once it gets up and running, twenty hours a week off of my plate is just, you know, that is that's tremendous. Yeah. Then it's up to me to actually make it worthwhile by by using those twenty hours the right way.

Brian Casel: 01:09:28

Yep. Yep. Totally.

Jordan Gal: 01:09:30

So in terms of training, we we talked about that. A little bit of babysitting, being able to read back on, you know, your your help desk software, your email, just to be able to look back at the way you handle things. Anything else you wanna add on training? I think, you know, that that pretty much covered it in terms of quality of their work.

Brian Casel: 01:09:51

Yeah. No. I think that's I think we we covered in various parts so far. I guess the last thing to kinda touch on here would be, like, the tech and the software and tools that we use. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:10:01

In the very beginning, first year, Gmail. Just use Gmail. It's like, you don't need to set up some fancy, you know, customer support help desk if it's really just you and then maybe one other support person. Although at at some point with that first support person, you will need a help desk. Just I'm just saying, like, don't waste too much time on it in the very early days.

Brian Casel: 01:10:22

Just get to it when you really need to. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:10:25

I I like using software like that. I'm relatively price insensitive. Know, I always think I look at it and I say, okay. If I use Help Scout and it's $15 a user per month and call it two users, me and someone else or starts off as one, whatever, that's $30 a I'm paying this guy fucking $800 a month. So Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:10:46

If it's gonna be more organized for an additional 30, then I don't care about the 30 at all.

Brian Casel: 01:10:50

That's that's definitely true.

Jordan Gal: 01:10:52

Maybe that's how I end up with, you know, 20 subscriptions to software by the end of the year.

Brian Casel: 01:10:56

But Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:10:57

But if if it works and makes things better, then I'm okay with pulling the trigger early.

Brian Casel: 01:11:02

In terms of, like, tools, so we use HelpScout. We've been using it since since since we started using a help desk software.

Jordan Gal: 01:11:08

That's that's that's HelpScout?

Brian Casel: 01:11:11

Help Scout. Yeah. And and there are a few other tools that that I became aware of after using Help Scout that I might have chose if if I were if I were to, like, start over again. Who's that? Groove?

Brian Casel: 01:11:24

Groove. I I really like HelpSpot, Ian Landsman, what what he's been doing. And Oh, HelpSpot. Yeah. You they have two products, Userscape and HelpSpot.

Brian Casel: 01:11:36

And I really like the look of their Helpspot tool. And I I probably would have gone with that early on, but the cost of switching right now is is too high.

Jordan Gal: 01:11:50

Helpspot. Is that even is that software as a service, or is that one time purchase?

Brian Casel: 01:11:55

Yeah. Yeah. It's SaaS. Or I think I'm not sure. Because he has one that's that's self hosted and one that is for

Jordan Gal: 01:12:01

less than six payments. Very interesting.

Brian Casel: 01:12:05

So that's pretty cool. But but, I mean, you know, Help Scout is, I think, becoming one of the leaders. Of course, there's, like, stuff like Zendesk, which honestly is awful. There's, desk.com. I haven't really worked with that one.

Brian Casel: 01:12:19

I think it's kinda enterprise y.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:20

Right. Yeah. Help Scout looks good. Groove looks good. You know, I think you just have to look at, like, what's important to you is

Brian Casel: 01:12:28

What what I look for and what I really loved about Help Scout in the beginning, and a lot of these do the same thing now, is it's so invisible to the client.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:37

They still just see email.

Brian Casel: 01:12:38

The all they see is an email.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:40

It's not like come here and type in your support ticket number and get a status update.

Brian Casel: 01:12:44

And That is what I freaking hate about Zendesk.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:47

Drives you nuts. That drives you nuts. Yeah. And I also look at I look at integrations.

Brian Casel: 01:12:54

Yeah. Yep.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:55

Because I I

Brian Casel: 01:12:56

always has a bunch of integrations, but we don't really use them.

Jordan Gal: 01:12:59

Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. At least I

Brian Casel: 01:13:02

don't know.

Jordan Gal: 01:13:02

At least ahead of time, always look at integrations, and I just look forward and I say, I use Olarc, and can I just zip out a ticket from Olarc directly to, you know, to to HelpScout, or can it track Right? And there's also

Brian Casel: 01:13:19

That's a good question because we use Olarc too and we probably if you can attach

Jordan Gal: 01:13:22

those too, but Right. If you can if you can attach Olarc conversation to a ticket, like, it just gives you more context.

Brian Casel: 01:13:29

I honestly haven't even thought about that, but that would be really helpful. Hey. Look at that

Jordan Gal: 01:13:33

adding value. And it's it's also, yeah, integrated with Slack. I don't know. I always I always like integrations because I see complications when things don't talk to each other. Like, right now, you know, with building out the sales process, I'm using Pipedrive as the CRM.

Jordan Gal: 01:13:51

And depending on where they are in the process, I want as much context as possible. Right? If someone's in Pipedrive as a sales prospect and then just goes out on their own and starts a free trial on their own without talking to us, which is no. That's normal. That that's gonna happen regularly.

Jordan Gal: 01:14:10

Mhmm. I don't want my salesperson calling them the next day and saying, hey. How about that, you know, free trial? Did you wanna get it started when they did it yesterday? So I want Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:14:19

I want Pipedrive to talk to my app to flag that person as a free trial now. So I I always think about integrations just looking forward and saying, how do I, you know, not make these mistakes like calling someone up and asking for the next step in the sales process when they just went they just went out and started a free trial. So it's Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:14:38

You do have some more, like, automation built into the software that we don't have or really need. But we I mean, we use Trello as a CRM. I've got a whole post about that. I'll put it in the show notes. But the nice thing about HelpScout I mean, is the same with probably any help desk really is that we're constantly shooting each other links to tickets in HelpScout.

Brian Casel: 01:15:00

Like, they all have a unique URL. So in So you say

Jordan Gal: 01:15:04

Trello card. Out, and you click on it, and you're right there in that person's Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:15:07

Like like our we use Trello as a CRM. So every new person gets a card, and we've got, like, a template of the card. And one of the things in that card is, like, paste their HelpScout URL here. And then, like, right from the Trello card, we can link right over to a recent conversation with them in HelpScout. Or constantly, like, in Slack, we're we're saying, like, hey.

Brian Casel: 01:15:29

Have you talked to this customer? Paste the HelpScout link. You know? So we're kinda constantly, like, jumping in and out of it that way. Other Interesting.

Brian Casel: 01:15:38

Tools do we have other so I mean, you know, knowledge base, that that's another good one to set up. I know HelpScout has, a docs documentation tool. We use we just have, a self hosted WordPress designed our own.

Jordan Gal: 01:15:52

Right. If you know if you know what you're doing. But if if you're like me and you look at that and you say, oh my god. Don't wanna spend any energy on that at all. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:15:58

It makes HelpScout more attractive to say they have their own, you know, docs product that's just Yeah. A hosted I just recently came across one of my competitors, and I was like, damn, man. These guys have a nice looking knowledge base. And I look at the bottom, like, powered by HelpScout. Damn it.

Jordan Gal: 01:16:17

Yeah. But that's something like that that makes it easy. I think it's great. Yep. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:16:21

And then managing tickets, would you guys, like, assign tickets as they come in or it's assumed because it's a certain type of issue that someone's on it. I guess you just have to sort that out upfront.

Brian Casel: 01:16:32

Yeah. This is something that, like, we had good systems, and then they get messy as things get get go on. So we're constantly tweaking things. Like, we have different tags that we use in inside HelpScout. We we don't really assign I mean, we do have, like, certain things that we just know, alright, that person will be better at handling that than that person.

Brian Casel: 01:16:54

And and we're constantly passing tickets back and forth to one another, Or or the team is, like, you know, Kate will give something to to Bibiano, and he'll give back to Kate, and, like, they'll kinda communicate. The other really nice thing about HelpScout is their notes feature. I love this feature where you can post a little note, like a internal private note right in line in a ticket. So you can, like, reply to the customer, and then right above that be like, hey. Hey, Kate.

Brian Casel: 01:17:21

Take care of this, this, and this on this ticket.

Jordan Gal: 01:17:24

Oh, so if you promise someone by email, like, I'm really sorry about this. Let me check it out tonight, and we'll get back to you tomorrow morning. And you along with that, you can add a note like, Kate, I promised this person to respond by tomorrow morning. Make sure you you take care of that.

Brian Casel: 01:17:36

Yeah. And I might give, like, some technical instructions. Like, you know, what I meant by that was, like, set up the form this way and go here and blah blah blah. You know? Very cool.

Brian Casel: 01:17:45

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:17:45

Nice, man. Alright. Well, look. This may not have been the most inspirational podcast of all time. However, it's it's important.

Jordan Gal: 01:17:54

And, yeah, I I appreciate, you know, getting your your take on this. You've done it a bunch of times before, and I will definitely I mean, I'm doing this, you know, one one way or another. There's no way I'm not backing out on on hiring someone, so I have to do it. So, you know, my struggles and successes and luck and bad luck, I'm looking forward to sharing, looking forward to getting your your your help on.

Brian Casel: 01:18:15

Yeah. By the way, I should have called this out at the beginning of the episode, but you guys should also go back and check out, like, episode 20 something, I think. It's with Ian Landsman who I mentioned earlier. He runs Userscape and and and Helpspot. Did a whole episode.

Brian Casel: 01:18:33

I interviewed him about, like, how to do customer support really well. Not so much like hiring customer support, but just like how to manage customers really well. So you guys should definitely go back and check that out. I'll put the link in the show notes. And and yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:18:48

Very. That's it.

Jordan Gal: 01:18:50

Cool, Brian. Well, that's that's gonna just about do it for us.

Brian Casel: 01:18:54

Yep. Alright, Jordan. So as always, you guys can go back and listen to more of the backlog of episodes at bootstrappedweb.com and head over to iTunes and be a smart person. Leave us a five star review. Tell us what you think.

Jordan Gal: 01:19:08

Yes. We we appreciate it very much, and it's nice to show your brilliance to the world. Until next week. Everyone take it easy out there, Brian.

Brian Casel: 01:19:17

You too. Alright.

Jordan Gal: 01:19:18

Talk to you soon. Later, bro.