Time flies when you’re having fun, and it’s been non-stop fun since Sankalp and I committed ourselves to build DelightChat back in August, with an overarching mission to empower 100,000 merchants across the globe to deliver delightful service to their customers.
Here’s what we have been up to ever since.
Understanding merchants better through 1:1 deep dives
We have been talking to merchants regularly since SuperLemon days. But after we started working on DelightChat, we have taken an even more meticulous approach where we make 1:1 deep dive conversations with merchants who sign up for the DelightChat beta.
The purpose of these 1:1s is to understand merchants, their day-to-day lives, the challenges they tackle daily, and how customer support and communication fits in all of this.
Our mission is to build the best customer support tool for an ecommerce brand, period. And these deep dives are how we will develop the understanding to get us there, one call at a time.
To all the merchants who spared their valuable time from their busy schedules, we are grateful. We promise to use your inputs in the best way possible and build a world-class product that serves your needs and leaves you delighted.
Building the DelightChat tribe
To enable the vision and impact of DelightChat, we need more than just two co-founders and sheer will. We need a team of passionate team members to work side-by-side with us. We call ourselves the DelightChat tribe.
Our team is currently five members strong.
- Akash Joshi was the first engineer to join the team. He contributes to open source software, builds and launches his side-projects and API tools and is passionate about building delightful product experiences using the power of code.
- Deb Mukherjee leads marketing for DelightChat. He runs a podcast to help other SaaS entrepreneurs reach their customers through content. In general, he’s excited about all things marketing and branding.
- Jay Padmakumar joined the marketing team as a content specialist. Jay traveled to half a dozen countries worldwide, teaching English to kids in school before he ventured into the world of marketing and content.
- Sankalp Jonna is the co-founder and CTO at DelightChat. We built SuperLemon together, where he handled all things tech.
- Preetam Nath is the co-founder and CEO at DelightChat (I’m writing this!). I do everything outside of writing code to make our company go where it’s supposed to.
In the next three months, we expect another 3-4 passionate individuals to join the tribe and ride with us to realize the mission and impact we want to create in the lives of ecommerce merchants.
Marketing Strategy
Great marketing is about understanding where your target audience hangs out, what value they seek, and then delivering that value to them in the best way possible.
While we want to build a widely-recognized and reputable brand for DelightChat, in the near term, our focus is on building awareness and gaining enough traction to get our initial set of customers.
The first pillar we chose to focus on is SEO and content. Through our team’s creativity and execution chops, we have already made great strides in building a presence on Google for keywords that Shopify merchants look for.
With a mix of creativity and laser-sharp focus, the team worked on projects like Best Shopify Apps, Ecommerce Resources, Ecommerce Glossary, writing alternative pages, and listicles.
The result? We are already on track to reach 180,000 impressions and 500 clicks/mo from Google search results.
We will double down on this further while also working on the next pillar of DelightChat’s marketing strategy. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to catch all the action!
Product Development and Beta Launch
Right after Sankalp and I put our full mind and commitment to building DelightChat, we started designing the core product.
Our product vision with DelightChat is to make a tool that’s easy-to-use and familiar to Gmail and Messenger while packing powerful features that help you resolve customer queries better.
September was spent laying the groundwork in terms of UI/UX as well as technical architecture. Development started from October onwards.
While initially we had set a beta launch date of 15 December, we quickly realized that the deadline was unattainable.
And so we pushed the beta launch to first week of February.
Here are two reasons why we made that decision:
- As we conducted more 1:1 calls with merchants, we understood better the minimum set of functionality a product like DelightChat needed to have for our tool to replace a merchant’s existing customer support tools or workflow.
- The technical complexity of building a robust product was more than we anticipated, and we discovered more as we delved deeper.
We know and understand the importance of customer communication for a DTC brand.
Therefore, we decided to take the extra time to make the product more functional, more robust, and serve as a reliable replacement for a merchant’s existing workflows from Day 1, even during beta.
And that's a wrap!
It's been a short but intense few months for the DelightChat tribe. We are all taking the last few days of 2020 and the first few days of 2021 to rest, recharge and come back with full-force for the year ahead.
We can't wait to become the #1 customer support tool for small and mid-sized ecommerce brands across the globe!
DelightChat beta launches in the first week of February
If you run an ecommerce brand, we’d love to help you manage your customer support seamlessly.
Join the waitlist and book a 1:1 call with me so that I can learn about your brand, and how we can help you deliver delightful service to your customers ❤️
