Support surface assistance
Chatbot, web and content work for a hosting company
A focused engagement on the client-facing surface of a hosting business: the support chatbot, the marketing pages and the written content around both.
- Type
- Project
- Year
- 2020
- Surface
- Support
- Output
- Shipped
The brief
What the situation actually was
A hosting company whose support load was dominated by a small number of repeated questions, arriving through a channel that required a human every time.
Hosting support has a clear shape: a large volume of genuinely simple questions, and a small volume of genuinely difficult ones. Treating both the same way is what makes the queue unmanageable.
The work
What came off their desk
In the order it was handed over, which matters more than the list.
-
01
Chatbot integration and customisation
Not an install. Configured against the questions actually being asked, with a visible route to a person.
-
02
Web and graphic design
Marketing and support pages, so the answers existed somewhere linkable.
-
03
Content writing
The client-facing explanations, which is where most of the deflection actually comes from.
How it ran
The order of operations
The content came before the bot. A chatbot has nothing to answer from if the answers are not written down, and most failed support bots fail for exactly that reason rather than anything to do with the model.
So the work ran in that order: establish what gets asked, write the answers properly on pages people can be pointed at, then configure the bot against that material with an obvious escalation path.
The outcome
What had changed by the end
Stated plainly. Where there is no number, there is no number.
- Repeated questions answered on pages that could be linked rather than retyped.
- A support chatbot configured against real questions, with a visible human route.
- Marketing and support surface shipped as one consistent set.
What it taught Write the answers first. A support bot is a delivery mechanism for documentation that already exists, not a substitute for writing it.
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