Customer Service as a Service, $7K revenue in 5 months

The Inspiration 💡

In July 2022, I challenged myself to launch a new product or service in one week. The idea for a “Fractional Customer Support Team” had taken up space in my head for about two years, and it seemed a good option for a short timeline launch. A Productized Service meant I didn’t have to do a significant amount of product development. Just throw up a landing page and go!

The idea for a Customer Support Service business came to me with my first side hustle, Learn to Solder Kits. The actual amount of support requests wasn’t challenging, but the context-switching cost was high. I only received a few emails a day. But needing to drop everything and respond to customers right away was hard. If only I had someone, I trusted to check in on the inbox!

I pitched the idea to my now co-founder, Ellis Annichine. We had worked together previously for about a year. Our previous working relationship gave me confidence that it would be a good fit for both of us. We’d done business operations and customer support tasks for New Sphere (2020 - 2022), an online preschool, successfully. What not just take that, bundle it up, and offer it as a service?

You are going to answer customer support emails all day? Really? 🤨

I put the landing page together and launched it on July 8, 2022. The idea was met with skepticism among friends and family. I’ve been a software engineer for nine years. Now I was switching gears to something totally out of my professional sphere. Is this what a mid-life crisis looks like?

But it didn’t feel out of my skillset to me. I’ve been running Learn to Solder Kits since 2015 and doing all the customer support. I stepped into New Sphere in 2021 as a software engineer but being small and scrappy; I ended up wearing a lot of hats which included doing customer support.

Once I started telling people I was doing a Customer Support business; I gained a deeper understanding of how people felt about customer support tasks. It turns out it is a big pain point!

“Oh, I feel bad for you…”
“I’m so sorry you have to do that.”

(Remember, I am choosing to do this, but people still acted as if I must be in some dire situation)

Finding Customers, Getting Paid, and Growing 🚀

Giving two strangers on the internet access to customers seemed like a big ask. I was surprised by how smoothly potential customer calls went. People couldn’t wait to hand over their customer support tasks. Ellis and I typically do a 30-minute intro call for us to meet and discuss the Evergreen process. On the calls people would say: “How soon can you start?”, “I’ll make your accounts right now!” etc.

We priced our services low, very low. Starting at $179 for 250 customer requests per month. While most internet advice says, “don’t price too low” I felt like the potential learnings would be a bigger payoff than the actual money. I think this was the right call. Prices have now increased and we have some momentum.

This led me to my next concern, growing too fast. It takes time and care to onboard into a new business. Maintaining the quality of work is an absolute must. If we take on too many customers all at once, that quality might suffer.

Ellis and I set a rule of only one new customer every two weeks. This policy meant some customers had to wait up to 6 weeks to onboard. It has been an exercise in patience to onboard customers slowly but it has paid off. Feedback from current customers has been fantastic! They have even started referring new customers to us. Inbound customer referrals are now our number one acquisition channel for discovery calls.

As we continue to grow, we will reach a point where we need to bring on additional people. Ellis and I are focused on laying groundwork and processes that will allow us to grow our small team.

On a Mission 🎯

Despite “answering customer emails” not being a sexy business idea, I feel motivated daily that I am on a bigger mission. My mission is to help business owners succeed while having a more balanced life.

Two of our current customers mentioned how they were able to enjoy Thanksgiving Week (US Holiday Nov 24th) with their families for the first time in years. Knowing their inboxes were being looked after allowed them to disconnect. That feels good.

I have suffered from burnout. I’ve tried to do it all myself and struggled. Hiring my first employee for Learn to Solder Kits was a turning point for me. It allowed me to grow my business while leading a happier, more balanced life. I hope Evergreen Support can bring just a little bit of that to more founders on their journey.

The Data 📈

Now for the fun stuff, graphs!

We started with a mix of hourly, one time fixed-price, and MRR jobs. Really anything we could get. As we built trust with customers it has become much easier to prove the value of a monthly fee for our services.

Thank you!

I am particularly thankful for the support of the Indie Hackers community. Building a business is hard but knowing you have people rooting for you makes it better ❤️

Special thanks to…

Marc LG
Anthony Castrio
Tim Osterbuhr
Liz Hermann

If you’re interested in talking about customer support or indie hacking in general, you can find me on Twitter @emmfletcher and I’m also a member of Indie Worldwide.

If you are interested in Evergreen Support services, we currently have a $100 off your first month offer (ends Dec 1st). Sign up here. No payment is required upfront.