You may have heard the term "zero inbox," where you aim to keep your email inbox empty by replying, deleting, or filtering every new email that comes in. It’s a neat concept, but in SaaS, it’s generally accepted that as your project grows, your support burden grows too, sometimes even faster than your user base.
Back in 2021, as we planned the next major release of our platform, we used the opportunity not just to rework some processes and retire technical debt, but to challenge ourselves: How could we reduce the number of inbound support tickets?
Types of Support-Seekers
When we looked at our customers, we realised they generally fell into two groups:
Category 1:
People who do everything possible before contacting support.
Category 2:
People who reach out even when the answers might already exist in videos or knowledge base articles.
So, we dove into our support ticket data. A recurring theme quickly popped up: many questions were already documented in our knowledge base (from the Category 2 crowd), but for some reason, customers weren’t finding the answers.
The Eureka Moment
That’s when we had our "aha" moment:
Why don’t we bring our knowledge base right into the platform itself? Traditionally, knowledge bases are separate from the product, often hosted on a third-party platform. This requires users to leave what they’re doing to find help, which can be enough of a hurdle for some to just fire off a support ticket instead.
The UI Change
We decided that every configuration page in our platform should have a quick-reference module. This brief panel would describe each configuration option in plain English, with a direct link back to our knowledge base for anyone who wanted more detail.
The Outcome
When we launched the new platform in 2023, the results were dramatic. Our inbound tickets plummeted so much so that, at first, we honestly wondered if there was a glitch with our ticketing system!
Key Takeaways for Start-ups
Put help where it’s needed most: Embed your knowledge base and support resources directly into your product, not just in a separate docs site.
Analyse your support data: Look for repeated, easily-solved questions, these are prime candidates for in-app help.
Small UX changes can have outsized impact: Meeting users where they are beats expecting them to hunt down answers elsewhere.
Reducing tickets isn’t just good for your support team, it’s better for your customers too. The less friction they face, the happier they are. Maybe, just maybe, you CAN get closer to zero tickets than you thought.