Cloud-Based Business Offers Free Solution for Customer Service

August 5th, 2011 by Ned Smith, BusinessNewsDaily Senior Writer

Nothing can drive your burgeoning business from hero to zero quicker than poor customer service. But what do you do when your business has become big enough to need customer service, but your budget hasn’t grown to match? A lot of small- to medium-size businesses have turned to Assistly for an economical assist with customer service.

Assistly is a cloud-based customer service platform that helps businesses listen to and support customers in real time using email, self-service FAQs, live-agent chat and social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The platform lets companies bring in support requests from multiple channels and consolidate them in one collaborative desktop that can be accessed by anyone in the organization. The system supports detailed case management and interaction management.

Some of the companies that have already adopted Assistly include Klout, Vimeo, Yelp, Etsy, Pandora, Gowalla and Square.

Last month Assistly, which was launched in 2009, rolled out version 2.0 of its software-as-a-service (Saas) platform, which includes a new customer pricing model that offers every company its first full-time agent license for free.

“We give everybody a full-featured version of our software and then let them expand their use affordably, $1 per hour for part-time users and $49 a month for full-time users,” said Alex Bard, Assistly’s CEO. “We let companies of any size provide awesome support to their customers immediately.”

It’s very common for small companies using Assistly to have a combination of full-time and flex agents, the company said. A small business with one full-time agent plus one to five flex agents can deliver support for a few dollars a day.

“We’re focused on helping small and mid-size companies adapt to the explosive demand for customer support,” said Matt Trifiro, Assistly’s vice president of marketing. “Support today is social, mobile and global. This puts enormous pressure on companies, which is why we built Assistly for efficiency. Almost daily, a customer tells us they’re two to four times more efficient than before they started using Assistly. For some companies, it’s literally like doubling their support staff.”

Article provided by BusinessNewsDaily, a sister site of Laptopmag.com.