Support Team Funding Aug-Nov 2022

Secret Governance
1

Summary

This proposal is for the on-chain funding of the Support Team for the period of Aug 22nd, 2022 to Nov 22nd, 2022

The goal of this Support Team is to be the first line of defense for users on the Secret Network, and to be present and active during every major NFT mint or dapp launch/upgrade to assist in a smooth process for users, 24/7 and all social channels of the ecosystem

Retrospective

The Good

Due to market conditions with a lowered number of users, the activity on the Secret Network has been slower while the support team has seen a lower than usual number of incoming tickets or support requests. The support team took that time to brainstorm and revamp the previous User Support system, seeking automation where it is possible.

Based on the historical ticket activity, the Support team aims at automating at least 60% of the support issues.

Zendesk is in a early working state right now. We are still working on adding some more guides/troubleshooting articles and tweaking the chatbot to better understand different user phrasing of issues. you can take a look and fool around with it now https://secretnetworkhelp.zendesk.com/

The Bad

-Keplr API issues were common, with user’s wallets displaying wrong balances, not allowing viewing key creations or swaps at crucial times of trading.

-The Monero Bridge faced i2pmail delivery issues. Users were redirected to Altermail or Session Messenger while the support team acted as intermediary between the XMR Bridge team and the users

-The Secret bridge had a few issue with transactions needing to be pushed

Why Zendesk?

We chose to integrate Zendesk primarily for two reasons. The first being the ability to scale support as needed. By transitioning to a support platform we are given tools that will allow us to better organize our troubleshooting and solving guides. This will allow us to easily add more members to our team and get them up to speed much faster than the system that was in place.

The second and bigger reason is to utilize their chatbot. Their chatbot is designed to search through the Zendesk knowledge base and attempt to match the user up with the article/guide/instructions to best solve their problem. This chatbot should get more accurate as it sees increased use.

Target Deliverables for this Funding Period

-Roll out the Zendesk support platform and integrate it with the existing support tools already in place

-Assist users on the network with any issues they may be having on any of our supporting channels, including but not limited to: Secret Network Discord, Secret Community Telegram, Altermail, Zendesk and the Secret Forums

-Moderation of community channels such as Telegram channels, Discord or Reddit

-Improve coordination between the Secret Support Team and builders, Validators, Relayers and Core Team, to help better identify the common issues users are having.

Budget Request

The support Team asks a budget for the compensated leadership roles and a discretionary budget to pay for the tools.

The Support Committee has lowered its ask for this period by ~ 75% but believes that by adding Zendesk and its tools that we can still offer support during the three major time zones, work on the deliverables and respond to general inquiries while solving Support tickets.

Compensated Roles

@mrgarbonzo $3000 / month | 60 hours per month

@reversesigh $2000 / month | 40 hours per month

@TheWaffle $2000 / month | 40 hours per month

Discretionary Budget

Discretionary Budget = $390 / month

This budget will be used to pay for the Zendesk subscription for MrGarbonzo, Reverse and Waffle which is $130 a month per user

Total Ask

MrGarbonzo = $3000 / month

Reverse Sigh = $2000 / month

Waffle = $2000 / month

Discretionary Budget = $390 / month

Total Proposal Spend for 3 Months: $22,170

Edit to include final ask

18,475 scrt @ $1.20

8 Likes
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This looks great and I think switch to zendesk will make a better user experience. Is there anywhere we can look at to see a graph of tickets vs. time, I’m curious how the market conditions/other events affected the usage.

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Hi Sandman, thank you for your support on this proposal.
Unfortunately, the Discord Ticket Bot does not keep track of tickets, beside their numbers and does not allow extraction of data. I kept track of the tickets myself these last 3 months up to mid August and they present as follow:

  • 8% were linked to IBC issues, relayers or lost funds
  • 8% were related to the Monero Bridge, as the i2pmail system has been down while the Support Team acted as an intermediary between Anon users and Anon dev team
  • 28% of the tickets were about Keplr or Network issues
  • 22% were about the Ethereum/BSC bridge, as transactions happen to get stuck and need to be pushed by the dev team.
  • 22% were about general user issues
  • 7% were related to all the SecretSwap UX issues
  • 5% for other issues with other dApps

The Zendesk system that we are setting up at the moment will allow for a better extraction and analysis of the tickets

3 Likes
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Really appreciate the work you all do supporting the network. It’s a thankless job, and I’ve seen that huge log of tickets. This has my support.

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Glad to see the support system is graduating to Zendesk, it should really help us to scale!

I just hope that when the bull market comes and those huge waves of tickets come in that we have hands on deck to deal with them & maintain a smooth UX. If you do see anything like that then I & our Agent Coordinator team will be happy to pitch in & lend a hand, you can reach us in the Coordination channel on Discord.

Can you guys shed some light on what features we should expect to see in Q3 from Zendesk. Will you be hosting the chatbot widget on scrt.network for example, and will support tickets be handled via email only to start, or more methods?

FAQ site is looking pretty neat already. Thanks for including the Become an Agent link at the top of the page! :heart:

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once we get more of the back end tools built out zendesk will allow us to quickly and easily scale the team up if/when the time comes and recruiting from agents would make the most sense

there is a way to integrate zendesk tickets directly into discord but they require user to input email and phone number and i dont think that’s something many in our community will want to do for privacy reasons. so for the time being i think two different ticket platforms is the way forward (still looking into other 3rd party discord <> zenddesk connections). but as usual we will continue to help Telegram, discord, forums, reddit, twitter, alter, sessions, keybase

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Assuming ticket complexity follows a normal distribution, I’d like to see greater utilization of junior labor to handle the majority of the items.

For example, Secret appears to have a strong presence in Nigeria where I’d expect $15 / hour to still be attractive despite this quote being for entirely $50 / hour.

Perhaps someone from Nigeria could comment on whether 6,330 NGN / hour would be attractive for part time support work.

Assuming it would be, I’d like to see 80% of support labor at $15 / hour (6,330 NGN) with the remaining 20% being this highly senior / specialized rate of $50 / hour.

2 Likes
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I don’t dislike that idea, my only point of caution is finding the right people.

There have been several instances where someone has asked for help in a ticket, I asked for their address, and they sent their mnemonics… at which point I had to delete the message and go through the process of explaining what mnemonics means, how technically they should now burn their wallet, etc.

The point I’m coming to is what does that division of labor look like? Junior helps within different chats, and senior has responsibility over tickets?

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Perhaps the Secret Agency could make recommendations for qualified candidates and then the existing support team could hold interviews and make final selections.

In terms of division of labor, I’d picture an escalation system where senior support would only get involved in the day-to-day if it’s something the ppl on the front lines couldn’t solve.

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This system already exists imo, just not formal. Its a bit dependent on the market situation but…

Agents/active community members already help in any public chat with general user mistakes. Agents can file missions for this activity and get Agent points as a reward to rank up, There is also some discretionary budget from support. If an issue is too complicated its escalated into the ticket system.

There is of course still overlap, some users directly open a ticket. Others are helped in public chat by support or mods. But we can try to do more incentivization of Agents doing support tasks if demand grows with the market.

It is this stuff which actually gets most agents to further contributing positions, i consider myself, Skrillah and a few others an example of that flow.

2 Likes
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Count @reversesigh and I into that category as well - we started as agents just helping out. :slight_smile:

1 Like