We launched in October, 2011. Since then, we have achieved tremendous scale. That bring its own set of challenges in managing technology, sales and support. While we eat, breath and live technology, we have also taken good care of managing our sales and marketing. We are learning the art of managing our customer support while being “on the job”. We, now, spend a lot of our time, during the day and night (thanks to timezones and our global customer base), handing support queries through our feedback tab, emails and phone calls. Infact, we are proactively using our own tool to manage customer support.

Managing customer and tech support is a demanding task. Customers look for help only when they need it. We make sure that they get it instantly too. We try and respond to all online queries in less than 4 hours. Most of the times, our responses are instantaneous. We love to delight our customers. Earning their faith, love and trust is gratifying.

Against all advice, we haven’t hired anyone, yet, to manage our customer support. Between the two of us (Avlesh and Ankit), we respond to over 75 support queries everyday via WebEngage feedback tab, email and phone calls. Our support queries are mostly technical in nature. As co-founders and creators of the tool, we are best placed to address those. Also, given the passionate characters we are, there is this extra love and passion that automagically gets added to our responses. As founders of the business, we are committed to delight you with our proactive support.

These are the faces behind those instant replies you’d have received as customers.

Avlesh: co-founder, CEO and chief of customer support

Ankit: co-founder, CTO and chief of technical support

A customer replied to one of our product update emails this morning – “Avlesh, I am glad to hear great things about you guys. I had some feedback to share but did not end up sending it. Because, I believe that you are no longer directly responding to user feedback and the same is managed by some ‘customer support representatives’. (S)he would not get it. Though I might be wrong“. With this email, we learned one more lesson on “human psychology”. So much so, that it triggered this post!

We believe in the Zappos mantra of customer support. We are all ears. 24×7. Let us know.

Stay tuned. We love you!

This change does not affect any of the existing customers under trial period. They’ll continue to enjoy their 30 days of free trial as promised to them while signing up.

1. A lot of trial accounts with us keep lying dormant despite repeated system reminders. A larger trial period duration doesn’t help the cause here.
2. All paid customers, we have today, either paid us instantly or in less than two weeks of signing-up.
3. We have identified some cases wherein customers would opt for the paid plans but they never intended to pay in the very first place. So, they’d sign-up, use surveys, and all the premium features that come with the paid plans, for a month. Then they’d never show up again.

For a tool as powerful as WebEngage which integrates with your site in less than 2 mins, we thought it was about time to inflict this change so that we can control our sales cycles much more effectively and also make our customers save some precious time on account of decision making.

Stay tuned. We love you!

<script id="_webengage_script_tag" type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
  window.webengageWidgetInit = window.webengageWidgetInit || function(){
    webengage.init({
      licenseCode:"82617417"
    }).onReady(function(){
      webengage.render();
    });
  };
 
  (function(d){
    var _we = d.createElement('script');
    _we.type = 'text/javascript';
    _we.async = true;
    _we.src = (d.location.protocol == 'https:' ? "//ssl.widgets.webengage.com" : 
              "//cdn.widgets.webengage.com") + "/js/widget/webengage-min-v-3.0.js";
    var _sNode = d.getElementById('_webengage_script_tag');
    _sNode.parentNode.insertBefore(_we, _sNode);
  })(document);
// ]]></script>

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
  /**
   * define a function called webengageWidgetInit in the current window. 
   * if you define one, we'll use yours, otherwise we switch back to the 
   * default one that we ship along with our integration code.
   */
  window.webengageWidgetInit = function(){
    webengage.init({
      licenseCode:"82617417" //this is how we identify your site
    }).onReady(function(){
      //render the feedback (tab) and survey (if any) by default
      webengage.render();
 
      //Demo 1: bind the click event of sales-related-query button
      $("button#sales-related-query").click(function(){
        //render the feedback tab
        webengage.feedback.render({
          defaultFeedbackCategory:"Sales/pricing related query",
          showAllFeedbackCategories:true,
          showFeedbackForm:true //open the tab
        });
      });
 
      //Demo 2: bind the click event of apply-for-job button
      $("button#apply-for-job").click(function(){
        webengage.feedback.render({
          defaultFeedbackCategory:"Jobs and hiring",
          showAllFeedbackCategories:false, //don't show the category drop-down
          showFeedbackForm:true
        });
      });
 
      //Demo 3: bind the click event of take-a-survey button
      $("button#take-survey").click(function(){
        //call the survey renderer
        webengage.survey.render({
          //specify the survey to invoke (get ID from your dashboard)
          surveyId:"7djl619",
 
          //don't worry about targeting-rules for the survey
          //more on what is targeting and why should you use it -
          //http://webengage.com/features/survey-and-lead-generation#feature-01
          skipRuleExecution:true,
 
          //once a user has taken a survey or closed it on your site
          //we don't display the same survey to this visitor again.
          //now, you can choose to override this behavior
          showAllClosedAndTakenSurveys:true,
 
          //to keep the user experience intact on your site, WebEngage
          //let's you time-delay the survey. this works great in
          //auto mode. however, while using the API, you'd want the survey
          //to immediately pop upon some user action. "delay" is your friend :)
          delay:0
        });
      });
    });
  };
// ]]></script>

Stay tuned. We love you!

Go ahead, use the world’s simplest and most insightful in-site feedback and survey tool ever – in a language of your choice. We’ll continue to add support for more and more languages moving forward. Your language is missing? Are you willing to help us translate some 40 odd phrases? If you said yes, please get in touch.

Stay tuned. We love you!

We have made some major enhancements to the plugin which will now let customers directly sign-up from within their WordPress admin interface itself. No more coming to the WebEngage site to do so. The complete integration process now takes less than 5 mins. What more can you ask for from an end-to-end feedback management solution? . To get an idea about the 2 step installation process, please have a look at the screenshots underneath -

Step 1. Find us using plugin search in your WP admin. We are now listed in top 3 for most keywords.

Step 2. Activate. Fill up this simple form to create your WebEngage account and install the plugin. Done!

Stay tuned. We love you!

Moving forward on our commitment to help fellow startups, we are now elated to announce a 6 months FREE subscription of the Standard Plan for Morpheus gang companies. This offer is for 20 residents on a first-come-first-serve basis.

As on date, over 1200 online business trust WebEngage as their feedback management and in-site survey tool. The young and energetic residents at Morpheus would be a proud addition to the list that has heavyweights like MMT, Yatra, Indiatimes, Park n Fly, Future Group, Cleartrip, Buytheprice, Justeat, Reliance Insurance etc as customers onboard. We believe that WebEngage would help these companies consolidate their offering by getting valuable customer insights. Our best wishes are with these companies. We’d love to see them grow and become immensely successful (so that they eventually start paying for WebEngage …)

We’d like to thank Sameer and Nandini for getting this done.

Stay tuned. We love you!

Not any more. We did it, finally! Have a look at these shiny tabs underneath; now you can create one for your website in a language of your choice.
Some examples of custom feedback tabs. You can choose your own feedback text, color, background color and border color for the tab.	Oh, and we have a reason for our non-english customers to rejoice as well. Now, in a first, we let you choose your own unicode text to display on the tab!

Underneath is a preview from the WebEngage dashboard to illustrate how does the tab customization UI looks like for a customer.

Customizing the feedback tab. Manage at Dashboard > Settings > Feedback Configuration > Feedback Layout

Go ahead, get a über cool tab and an entire feedback/support management tool for your website. Oh yes, for FREE! Sign-up today for WebEngage.

Stay tuned. We love you!

I want to work with you guys because,
♥ You guys are a hardcore techie startup in Java domain.
♥ You guys are working on MongoDB and Relational database !!! Very few startups in India must be doing polyglot persistence ! Thats cool as well as a visionary thing !
♥ Yours is a SaaS product !!
♥ I believe you are creating a nice team which has the potential to become 37 Signals of India with solid usable and meaningful product portfolio !
♥ I am reasonably well at Java and most of the time I think of web scale architectures..!!!
♥ Because I am from Mumbai
♥ Because I am tired of working in a typical IT setup where most of your energy goes wasted in bureaucratic process oriented hell !
♥ Because I feel like home when I visit Web Engage site and read “about us” page ! I just want to be there
♥ Because I need a mentor in my life and you guys are perfect for the same !
♥ Because I eat,sleep and drink ideas and its possible implementation.
♥ Because I do believe that working on-line demo without any hassle of registration is the best selling point of a SaaS product..!!!
♥ Because I do believe and think and advocate a lot about restful APIs !
♥ Because I want to master JavaScript ( i know it already but lazy enough to thoroughly learn it , as jQuery and it’s ecosystem spoils your native JavaScript needs ) as I believe that is the core of Web App development.
♥ Because I hit “bulls eye” when I search something on Google !
♥ Because I have compiled/understood nice tool set of open source libraries which makes Java development more enjoyable ! Play Framework, JSoup, JOOQ, JDBCHelper.
♥ Because I believe in Web oriented Architecture !
♥ Because I can shoot , track 100s of email communications per day ! Which I already do as I have subscribed to some of the high traffic mailing lists for open source Java libraries.
♥ Because I can complement Team Web Engage and contribute in many meaningful ways !

If you are looking to pitch to a startup for your candidature, this can be a great example of how to do it. We are retaining the identity of this candidate.

Stay tuned. We love you!

Meet our 1000^th customer – www.pacificpavingstone.com. As a token of love, we have offered them a free upgrade to the Standard Plan for first 6 months.

Alright, so there we are – growing at a breathtaking pace. On an average, we have been adding 10 new customers everyday for the last 4-5 weeks. Our survey windows and the feedback tabs are fast reaching ubiquity; people are not taken by surprise anymore when they see our stuff working on sites they use everyday.

Do you have an online business? Yet to try us? 3 simple reasons for you to give us a go today -

1. You’d have never seen a stickier product - From designing survey questionnaire to changing the CSS to match your site’s look-n-feel to managing support queries via a powerful feedback inbox, WebEngage has all it takes to keep you hooked. Period.
2. You’d have never felt, being so much in control – From being able to “filter” the appearance of your surveys to specific audiences on your website to the world’s best one-time integration, we made sure that the power doesn’t lie with some silly robot. It lies with YOU. Period.
3. You’d have never felt, being so much loved and pampered – Over 90% of our support queries were resolved or replied to in less than 4 hours. Most of the times, almost instantaneously. We are humans who love humans. We hate dogs though. Period.

Get your dose of WebEngage dope - webengage.com/features/overview (view in full-screen mode).

Stay tuned. We love you!

The BIG League!

We, at WebEngage, are a fast growing startup. In less than 6 months of our public launch, we are now powering in-site feedback and surveys on over 950 websites worldwide. Quite a feat. Right? Maybe. In a world where significant numbers are always counted in the unit of millions, our numbers appear to be small.

So, we put our heads down trying to find out how we can become an insanely big enterprise. We looked up to the big boys. Then we realized we have done the same set of things as they did early on i.e. built an awesome product, created some noise around it and iterated so fast that customers started loving them and became evangelists. So, what’s missing? Well, an unusual suspect.

Finding 1: We don’t have an animal behind our back. Yet.
Ah, we know the reason now. It’s the goddamn animal mascot which is your path to glory. It is this creature that takes you in to the big league.

Finding 2: All the good looking ones are taken. We are not left with too many options
Monkey is the most abused one. Everyone seems to be betting their lives on the chimp. Going by the revenue figures and valuations of a few companies using chimp as their mascot, our ancestor seems to be the safest bet. But wait … we can’t copy. We are an “original” startup. So, we started looking around on what’s not taken yet. Our research implies that we can use one of these – Pig, Snake, Crow, Bear (not sure) etc. Yikes!

Help us please.
Help us by first telling us if our assessment is correct – can we become a multi-million dollar enterprise without having one of those creatures as our lucky mascot? If you think, we have to have one – let your suggestions come our way. Thanks in advance for helping us out by killing your time thinking about a silly animal.

Stay tuned. We love you!