Some customers prefer asking in a community because that can lead to responses from other customers (at times it can even be faster response than a company rep getting to respond). A good example is dev infra related companies, where a customer can get a lot of value by hearing from how other customers think about a specific problem. You don't get that through a typical customer support software which is one to one.
It comes down to preference. The trend is that companies have to meet where customers are already hanging. Some customers will prefer only email (and for them you still need a ticketing software), some will prefer social (depending on industry), and some will prefer chat/forum communities. If you want to stand out as a company (esp when you are starting out), you have to serve them where ever they prefer. Sure, if you have an amazing product with a strong moat, you have more leverage on how you want customers to interact with you. But that comes much later in a company lifecycle.
You can even do tickets on Discord. I've been on a server where users were able to create a ticket and then a new channel with the ticket number was created. The channel is private and only the ticket opener and users with the support role(s) can see the channel and communicate in it.
I get what you’re saying and agree, but the synchronous nature of Discord and Slack aren’t the best interaction model for what you’re describing. Async forums (which have existed since the beginning of the web) are much better suited for that…
I am not affiliated with the folks here, but I think this is a matter of opinion and where it diverges.
I am part of several channels that like to have a native feature request / bug reporting in Discord => once the thread is created it sends the ticket to JIRA / Linear
The issue is that the alternative with communities is people sending you DMs with requests so its hard to keep track.
As a community user, I can just /command create_request, fill in my description + screenshot and send over to their team to process
Absolutely! It’s helpful for us to keep the long tail of usecases in mind tho as we prioritize, so we can capture aspects of those. We’ll ofcourse never be able to replace a full custom bot. However, bots coded for specific uses come with its own set of challenges (eg. managing a backend server, logging, relying on someone else to update basic things etc.) which we hope to mitigate.
Appreciate the candid feedback! We started with use cases that are relevant for most communities, and plan to build out the functionality to make it more comprehensive. We recently added ability to query external APIs, and triggers through webhooks (you can check out NBA's discord which has live game threads powered by our bot builder). But agreed with you that there is more work for us to do here.
What sort of organizational things have you built bots for? Curious to hear about, so we can build towards that :)
There’s quite a few things I’ve built or been involved in building (I just do this on the side, but I’ve had a few commissions and it’s all primarily gaming-based):
- Discord as a notifications service: perhaps the most common thing I’ve built, but it’s very common for there to be a lot of things that people want to be notified about (an activity that starts every x hours, <thing> just spawned, price of x just hit y, shop that has different stock every day has x today, etc) a variety of things. How it’s usually done is that a bot posts notifications to a central #notifications/#announcements channels in a guild and people sign up for roles so that they get pinged for notifications that they want. I’m not sure if you already support this, but it shouldn’t be that much work
This was before the whole follow channel feature, but that’s very limited and I would imagine this is very common even outside video games, as you said live game threads, pings for when a streamer/game starts, etc
- Ad-hoc wiki: a lot of guilds have what’s basically a few (or many) wiki channels, and I’ve been involved in turning that into a bot-controlled channel that also syncs to a website so non-discord people can access it and you can index, search, etc (see `pvme.github.io` for example; I wasn’t involved in building it but it’s very similar to stuff I’ve built)
I’ve wanted to build what’s basically a wiki that’s discord bot controlled (to bring the interface to where the editors are), but also a has a nice web interface, access control, etc. but never found the time or the motivation
- Database frontend - various different forms of “write these things into a DB, and then spit it back out in a nicer format”
- Crappy REST client - sometimes games have stuff that’s only hidden behind obscure APIs, so you just write a bot that forwards /commands to the correct endpoint and spits it back out
- Informal market - some features around aggregating price/demand/supply information for informal trading of game stuff, for lack of a better term
Edit: I completely forgot, but communities around streamers/YouTubers are probably a huge market. I haven’t been involved in that area, but I know friends that funded a nice vacation from building bots for these people. Stuff like patreon management, perks, moderation, engagement, etc that I see your service as a perfect fit
- Discord as a notifications service - we do support aspect of it where folks can click a button to get a specific role (e.g. I want notification for xyz). We have a recurring trigger that can check an endpoint, and post an update from that endpoint. We don't yet support conditions on that (e.g. only notify if price hits x)
- Wiki - pvme.github.io looks pretty cool. I have seen couple other products that help convert community content into indexable pages. I like the idea of like a web interface where folks can edit, but the content also some how gets updated in discord (e.g. forums in discord could be a good use case for this?)
- Intra guild look tracking - this is definitely a little bit more complex than what we plan to support given it involves storing specific data for access at a later date. Is this pretty common for a lot of gaming communities?
- Crappy rest client - yes we can support this! Definitely get in touch if you find yourself wanting to do something like this in the future.
Looking forward to your feedback. If are open to sharing what sort of bots have you thought about building for your community, I can see if we can support those specific use cases.
We have been happy customers of Arctype for a few months. What started as a nice to have tool has now turned into a must have for our team in terms of sharing queries, and browsing data.
Love this! If you can pull in info from Slack/Discord convos that would be a big unlock. Do you plan to make this available to private repos shortly? Would love to try it out on an internal one, as we always find ourselves repeating information when onboarding new team members.
Dentboard - Princeton, New Jersey - Full-time - Project Manager/Product Designer
Dentboard (www.dentboard.com) is redefining the way dental providers use data to make everyday decisions. A customer-centric company, we’re chock full of awesome people who are passionate about our product and the doctors who use it. We are Dentist founded and led and have raised 1.2M in seed funding so far
Culture
At Dentboard, you’ll create and ship software everyday that is fundamentally changing the way the dental industry operates. Engineers at Dentboard own the product that they build completely and wear multiple hats during the development process. And thus, you should be able to empathize both with users and the rest of your team. This means considering both how our users will use your software and how your peers will use your code.
We are currently looking for a a ProjectManager/Product Designer. He/She will work with the CEO and business development teams to convert market data into a product idea for each release. As a Designer, this role requires converting that product idea into designs for the tech team to work with. As a Project Manager, the role will also require working with the technical team to decide resource allocation to complete each version of the product.
Responsibilities:
-Act as Product Manager in an autonomous team responsible for product
-Coordinate with Business Development and CEO regarding market data and user experiences
-Coordinate with Business Development and CEO to generate ideas for product versions.
-Transform the previously mentioned ideas for product versions into meaningful designs and mock-ups.
-Coordinate with the technical team regarding the implementation of each version and the designs.
-Stay 2+ weeks ahead of the technical team with designs. -Help work with team for designing user tests.
-Own, prioritize, and communicate the short, medium, and long term initiatives based on the KPIs used to evaluate each version of the product.
Requirements:
-2+ years product management experience in technology.
-2+ years Design experience in digital media/technology (preferable).
-Self-motivated and autonomous.
-Great communication skills.
-Strong opinions regarding product development philosophy and customer development best practices.
Wants:
-Knowledge of front-end programming (javascript, angular.js, css, etc.)
-Knowledge of backend programming (python), but not necessarily experience with programming.
-Demonstrated passion and knowledge of healthcare industry and trends.
If you are interested, lets chat: sanket@dentboard.com
