Client Spotlight: Kickstarter

This month, our Client Spotlight shines on Kickstarter, the leading crowdfunding platform that has opened up new revenue streams for countless artists, developers, and entrepreneurs all over the world. We recently caught up with Katherine Pan, the organization’s director of community support, as she talked about Kickstarter’s amazing track record and why the company turned to ModSquad to provide its audience the support they deserve.

When did Kickstarter start?

Kickstarter launched in 2009, but the story begins even before that. In 2001, Founder Perry Chen was hoping to help bring a pair of DJs to the 2002 New Orleans Jazz Fest. The endeavor proved too expensive, but it sparked a thought with Chen: What if potential attendees could pledge money for an event like this to happen? If the stated financial goal was met, the show would go on, having been brought about by the sheer will (and open wallets) of the people. From there, the concept behind Kickstarter grew. [Read about Kickstarter’s origins, as told by its founder.]

Tell us about Kickstarter. What is your mission and how do you achieve that?

Kickstarter exists to help people bring creative projects to life. We help creators find the resources they need, from funding to a community of supporters, to bring their ideas into reality. Since our launch, 13 million people have backed a project, $3.1 billion has been pledged, and 126,833 projects have been successfully funded. [Read more about the company here.]

What were some of the customer support challenges you faced?

Every day, we receive hundreds of inquiries from our community across dozens of topics. A typical day might involve providing basic technical support, walking a creator through the project build and planning process, or sharing more about Kickstarter’s values as a public-benefit corporation. We provide support in English, French, Spanish, and German, and before we partnered with ModSquad, our in-house team based in Brooklyn was responsible for maintaining our SLAs (service level agreements), including weekend support, as well as completing larger projects related to increasing efficiencies and improving the quality of the support we provide.

What brought you to ModSquad?

As our community grew, it became harder for our team to dedicate hours to the support queues (ensuring that the folks writing in received timely, helpful responses) while concurrently taking on larger projects. We initially partnered with ModSquad in April 2016 to assist us in answering Tier 1 support inquiries (which accounted for about 50% of our overall ticket volume), including weekend support. Our in-house team remained responsible for Tier 2 and Tier 3 tickets. This helped us free up time out of the queues to pursue larger projects in the service of our users. Additionally, our users could receive responses to their questions outside of our Brooklyn office’s business hours.

How has it been working with ModSquad?

We treat our Mods as if they were in-house team members and work to make sure they feel like they are truly part of the team. I believe that attention and care has paid off. We are more consistently maintaining our SLAs, while maintaining the quality of support we provide (as our CSAT data attests). Today, we’ve been able to train our Mods beyond Tier 1 tickets and look forward to continuing this relationship.