Captions · AI video editing app
Put every employee, including the CEO, in Discord to answer users and test ideas
Steady feedback without surveys or paid interviews; noisier as the app matured
Workedcommunityfeature-development
What they did
When Captions was 10 or fewer people, every employee was in Discord, tagging each other to answer; the CEO replied directly and floated ideas ('What if we added this feature?'). This replaced surveys, calls and paid research. As the product matured and grew noisier, Discord support questions were routed into in-app messaging so customers could be identified, while the Discord stayed active.
What happened
Continuous iterative feedback early on; later moved support out of Discord.
- Stage
- early
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How to Reduce Churn & Boost Growth with Fast, Empathetic Customer Support — Eli Winderbaum, Captions“And early on in the company, when we were 10 or less people, every single employee was in Discord, and we would mention each other and answer.”
“And it's kind of this iterative customer research where you don't need to bother with surveys or or setting up Google Meets or even paying people.”
“So we basically try to route all Discord support inquiries directly to the app and take them offline”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Captions: Let an engineer answer support herself and fix issues right away in the codeWorked well while finding product-market fit, guest says
- Captions: Let an AI agent answer easy questions and pass hard ones to a person with the full chatSupport team half the size it would be; 58-second first reply; no layoffs
- Captions: Try an AI agent only outside office hours, then advertise 24/7 supportA quick win: customers get an instant friendly reply overnight
- Captions: Offer round-the-clock support with one agent each in the Americas, Asia and Europe58-second average first reply; guest sees it as an edge over slow competitors
- Captions: Translate your website into Portuguese to grow in BrazilBig jump in Brazil installs after the Portuguese site went live; no number
- Captions: Show each customer's plan and renewal status in the support chat and prioritizeTailors replies; churned and premium users jump the queue; no numbers
- Captions: Hire your most helpful Discord members and customers as support agentsHires needed barely any training and knew the app better than the manager
- Captions: Quickly build a loudly requested small feature and have the CEO say 'we listened'Customers feel heard and become loyal, guest says; no numbers
- Captions: Post happy customer messages and reviews in a team Slack channel everyone seesKeeps the whole company focused on who they build for; no numbers
- Captions: Ask customers for an App Store or Play Store review after a good support chatGuest calls it huge; reviews naming agents attract new users; no numbers
- Captions: Track what share of subscribers contact support each month and watch for jumpsSteady at ~3% a month; jumps flag bad releases, outages or promos
- Captions: Compare each agent's satisfaction score to the team's to spot who needs helpSurfaced agents who were struggling, sometimes for personal reasons
- Captions: Test a 7-day free trial against a 3-day one7-day did worse, so the 3-day trial stayed
- Captions: Run every new feature as a two-week A/B test before keeping it
- Ask for a rating or review and link straight to it after helping someone