Channel.io

An All-in-One Business Messenger OS for Startups

142 followers

An All-in-One Business Messenger OS for Startups

142 followers

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Team collaboration software

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Customer support tools

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CRM software

Channel.io is an all-in-one business messenger OS that provides all the tools you need to operate and grow your online business. Unlimited live chat, team chat, CRM, Marketing, chatbot and automations to personalize customer experience.

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Launch tags:Productivity•User Experience•Customer Communication

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Spade Chrome Extension

We could definitely use this to keep in contact with users. However, could you emphasize how Channel is better than other messaging apps for this use case? We would also love to hear your feedback on Spade - which is also launching today!

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4yr ago

Channel.io

Maker

@mrmuke Sure, I'd love to check it out! Do you mind leaving me a link?? To answer your question: Our platform's actually quite different from most of the messaging apps out on the market. First, we have what you could call a dynamic ticketing system, in that we don't do emailing back and forth. Once customers leave their questions on the chat itself, agents can reach out to them right away, OR if they're not available, they can answer the question at a later time and customers receive push notifications that recall them to the site itself. We found that this increases the time spent on the site, and in many cases, we've seen this lead to increase in sales. Second, we have a 'whisper' and 'team assist' feature that allows agents to call other team members onto the same chat to assist customers. They're also able to whisper to each other on the same chat without it being visible to the customer so it can speed up the customer service process. Third, as all of our features are linked to the central CRM database, all customer information is available to agents the moment the chat is opened. This means agents can see what customers were last looking at before they contacted them, their location, contacts, etc. and make personalized suggestions based on their specific interests or needs. I've only scratched the surface, but if you'd like to learn more in detail I recommend checking out our site or you can reach out to me by email! Our company is one of the fastest growing start ups in South Korea and Japan and the go-to business messenger for any business with customers online (ie. ecommerce, startups, etc.) At the moment, we're looking for start ups that are interested in working with us and could provide feedback on how we can improve our platform for North American customers. If you happen to have any feedback, recommendations or referrals, I'd love to chat!

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4yr ago

Channel.io

Maker

@mrmuke In case you don't have time to read all of that, to simplify, our platform is designed specifically to allow agents to get up close and personal with customers, and allow businesses to personalize customer experience from start to finish. A lot of the times, you'll find messengers that are either too complicated to learn, not enough support from their teams, or have terrible overall end-user experience. (ex. useless chatbots, stiff 1on1 interactions, ticketing that takes days for a response.) We addressed all of that on our platform through feedback from our current customers.

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4yr ago

Spade Chrome Extension

@sodaman89 Read it all! Does sound pretty cool. Can we link custom information to show up when we click on users?

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4yr ago

Channel.io

Maker

@mrmuke When users join the chat, the information you have on them automatically shows on the right hand side of the chat window, and if you want, you can request specific information through what we call a 'support bot form' which is essentially a customizable survey. You could for example, request color preferences, size, interests, ask if they need reservations, etc.

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4yr ago

Spade Chrome Extension

@sodaman89 Does sound good, we've met with a few users and having a way to keep track of our previous notes could be useful especially as we meet with more.

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4yr ago

I have downloaded it, tried it out on my agency site, and I do like what I see so far. The "experience" in-app is great. It's definitely more of a pleasure to work with than other customer solutions. However, I see some major drawbacks compared to others as well. Far too much focus on aesthetics and not covering all business use cases. I see Channel.io as effective but only specific, narrow use cases. > we don't do emailing back and forth This to me is a drawback. There are so many solutions for answering prospective customer needs. So many chatbots and live messaging (even ProductHunt has one sticking out at me!). But I would love to have the Channel unifying platform integrated with email for asynchronous support. Almost all customer solutions out there have email integration where Customer Reps are in e.g. Zendesk, but the customers / clients themselves simply email you (e.g. xyzsupport@xyz.com) and it goes to your Zendesk platform. They never need to "login" to anything. This reduces friction. I can't foresee my business nor any consulting firm or business with technical knowledge transfers ever doing support via a chat window. To me, Channel seems only for a) prospective (pre-buy) customers, not ongoing support or hypercare, b) scaling startups with the goal of getting thousands of customers and who financially benefit with greater number of customers + less time per customer. In other words, low-value single point of sale "customers". Not ongoing high-value "clients". Is that fair to say? Maybe I'm just in the wrong place and barking up the wrong tree here with misplaced expectations. Example: Take Cloudways.com. They have a support chatbot, live chat window (with amazing support agents), and then a traditional email / support ticket system. All unified. The escalation progression is Chatbot to provide Documentation links and FAQ > Live Chat with an agent to solve immediately > Asynchronous ticket support system to "get back to you" if your issue cannot be solved or a follow-up needed. For example, this could be useful to update shipping status inquiries or Return Authorizations for even a small ecom startup - basically any inquiry that necessitates a delay. So how does Channel handle asynchronous / delayed customer interactions? >customers receive push notifications that recall them to the site itself Again, I see this as effective for very narrow use cases. But I don't want any platform (channel.io included) making those business decisions for me. This to me seems like an app that is 'marketing' or backwards-justifying its design decisions as being the best for everyone - when in fact, a truly agile "Business OS" (as you claim) leaves that customization up to the client. As someone who implements software myself, I am very aware of (and dislike) the tactic of software vendors only developing for one use case (e.g. customers must log back into the store/site) and then claiming that is what all clients should be doing (it increases sales). I don't think you can make that blanket claim. Intuitively, it seems only for websites where the site itself is the end goal (strictly product stores, not services).

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4yr ago

#2 What types of integrations do you have? Any exhaustive list? I love what I see with keeping one source of truth for that customer, but am curious about how actionable that is. It seems Channel wants everything to be contained within the platform. But considering all the customer data it generates, I would like to move that off platform (csv file?) so I can work with that in a format that my external and internal stakeholders prefer. This is really important because no way will organizations do wholesale changes to make Channel the basis of their business. It's best implemented via individual marketing teams. C-levels who use Microsoft (power bi) or Gsuite (data studio) are going to want those customer KPIs analyzed and delivered off platform. Having that available would make adopting Channel much easier!

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4yr ago

Channel.io

Maker

@jakobgoldwitz Wow! Thank you for the awesome feedback! As we mention above, we're all about being customer driven and our team lives and breathes by it. Feedback like yours is genuinely appreciated and I'll be sure to forward it to the rest of our team. Do you happen to have the name of the agency site you downloaded it for? It would help to attach the feedback to the site for reference. Even if you've uninstalled! (We can cross reference with our download/install history.) You made some really valid points and I'll address a few of them for you here. >>>We don't do emailing back and forth I should have clarified this more. When I said we don't do it, I meant it more figuratively rather than literally. Of course, depending on your business needs, emailing may be required. We've already started the process of implementing email into our services and we're nearing the final stages. We're expecting it to become available in the next few months, and it will be similar to the example you gave where customers can email the company and it goes to the platform. To put things into perspective, our company launched in South Korea and we've noticed a huge decline in the number of people using email here. (Also in Japan and other parts of Asia.) It's sort of a dying medium of communication between businesses and their customers here. Neither customers nor businesses feel the need to use ticketing to resolve issues, regardless of industry. In fact, it would be harder to find a consulting agency that still uses email over real-time chat. This is why we emphasize real-time communication to match the business culture of our main customer base here. However, as we continue to expand further West, we're receiving similar feedback to yours, stating that email and ticketing (asynchronous service) is still a large part of business culture there. So we're currently making adjustments as we speak. >>>they never need to "login" Our platform doesn't require customers or staff to "log in" on either side, and we designed it this way to reduce friction as you mentioned, on both ends. >>>I can't foresee my business nor any consulting firm or business with technical knowledge transfers ever doing support via a chat window. ...In other words, low-value single point of sale "customers". Not ongoing high-value "clients". You're not completely off target here. Our platform was initially designed to address the needs of SMBs (Startups, ecommerce, etc.) to help businesses get more customers and improve retention. However, we were surprised to find out that Channel.io was also popular among 'client-based' businesses. We have numerous consulting firms using our services in both Asia and North America without issues, and we found that their customers appreciated the faster response and care. We will most likely continue to pursue improving real-time communication over email/ticketing, as we believe it's going to become essential for all online businesses in the near future. But we don't disagree that this is going to be something we need to think about moving forward. As you've expressed, there are definitely going to be businesses out there that feel that the traditional ticketing systems are absolutely essential to their businesses. >>>So how does Channel handle asynchronous / delayed customer interactions? If there is a need for delay, agents can let customers know that it could take some time to find the answers to their questions, and respond when they have the answers. The push notifications get sent out to customers letting them know their questions were answered, along with a link that reopens the chat. It's actually not that different from traditional systems, except we've eliminated the need to create a new ticket, reference the ticket to the correct accounts, and respond. It also solves the issue of multiple tickets being created for the same inquiry, as the chat is just continued from the last conversation, and the customer info is available right on the screen for agents to refer to as they continue their consultations. >>>I don't want any platform (channel.io included) making those business decisions for me. This to me seems like an app that is 'marketing' or backwards-justifying its design decisions as being the best for everyone. A truly agile "Business OS" (as you claim) leaves that customization up to the client. (e.g. customers must log back into the store/site) I guess that makes us agile. ;) Of course, we don't believe in our customers, or their customers for that matter, being forced to do anything. First, end-users don't need to login anywhere in order to use our platform. They just click the widget on the page and start talking. Second, the features I mentioned in the previous comment are all optional and can be customized. We just placed this feature in there as an option. It's all available and visible in the settings! Seems like you missed it. Considering the fact that business owners spend lots of money, time and resources into building their site, business and brand, we felt it would be counterintuitive for them to not want customers spending more time on their sites and seeing more of their brand. Even for service-based businesses, we want their customers to remember who's servicing them. But as you stated, it wouldn't make sense for us to enforce that on anyone or believe that's best for everyone, which is why it's all optional. >>>What types of integrations do you have? Any exhaustive list? I could list all of the integrations we have, but chances are you wouldn't have heard of most of them as we've implemented the most popular ones in Asia first. At the moment, we're looking to find what the most used and most needed integrations are for our customers in the North American market, so we can allocate our resources to prioritize the most important ones. We integrate with Instagram at the moment, and we are in the process of adding more as we go! If you have any recommendations we'd love to hear them. >>>considering all the customer data it generates, I would like to move that off platform (csv file?) so I can work with that in a format that my external and internal stakeholders prefer As for the CSV file, we've also heard this feedback from our customers awhile back and are currently implementing! I hope this clarified any misunderstandings or confusion you might have had with my previous comments or descriptions. If you have any further questions please feel free to reach out!

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4yr ago

Channel.io

Maker

Hi guys, Channel.io was created with the mission of connecting businesses with customers. It solves some of the most common communications issues that businesses face day to day with their customers and their teams. The features are interconnected and work together to provide the offline, in-person customer experience to online customers through live chat, team chat, CRM, marketing, chatbots and automations. We don't believe in making customers wait for a response, but we also believe in the importance of reducing workloads for your team. You can stop using multiple platforms to keep your business running, and use one simple platform for everything you need to grow your startup. We're always looking to improve and make our product more suitable to our users, so if you have any feedback on our product please feel free to leave them here! We're also running VIP promotions right now for select startups. We offer free full access to our platform from anywhere between 3 months to 2 years depending on how your business qualifies. If you'd like to find out more please reach out! I'd love to hear your feedback and learn more about your business! Our Features: Live Chat & Team Chat -unlimited seats -unlimited chats -immediate responses for customers (no traditional ticketing) -chat tagging and automations -a highly customizable chat bot that allows customers to find their own questions -mobility and access through PC and mobile app Marketing -targeted marketing based on segments -one-time outbound messaging for customer recall -customizable templates you can adjust to fit your brand CRM -access to rich, detailed customer data -customizable support bot form to create interactive surveys for customer feedback/customer info -easy tracking of customers and segmenting (label new customers vs VIPs) -UTM to track inflow source -track their activity on the page for insight (see where you can make improvements) And so much more.

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4yr ago

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