Helpshift’s automated customer support tools reach more than 1.3B devices

Helpshift, a customer relationship management (CRM) company focused on providing help in mobile apps, announced today that its customers are using Helpshift on more than 1.3 billion mobile devices. That’s about half the mobile devices on the planet, and perhaps half of those customers are game players.

San Francisco-based Helpshift has a custom and automated system for dealing directly with customer complaints. It uses a searchable FAQ (frequently asked questions) platform and messaging technology that makes it easier for customer service representatives to deal directly with customers — such as game players — who have problems. The system is designed to automate the help process and enable players to get their answers to questions more quickly. Helpshift has expanded the customer support system into a full-blown in-app customer engagement platform, or a mobile CRM system.

The company said its customers have gained huge reach, and there’s no way that these customers — game developers or publishers or mobile app creators — could ever survive if they had to handle every single customer complaint on an individual basis. The company’s data shows that one in every five mobile users actively seeks help while using an app.

“Our momentum continues in gaming, and Microsoft uses us in Outlook products too,” said Abinash Tripathy, CEO and cofounder at Helpshift, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We have a bird’s-eye view of data. We learned that a fifth of the base is trying to find some kind of help.That revelation is huge.”

By bringing automation to that process, and making it easy to get to the right information quickly, Helpshift enables its customers to grow huge user bases without growing the complaint inbox. Of the 284 million users who actively sought help in-app, Helpshift said that only seven percent proceeded to file a support ticket after utilizing the self-service FAQ provided in-app.

But not everybody uses Helpshift or something like it. The company said that 95 percent of mobile apps in the App Store lack an in-app channel for customers to get immediate support.

Helpshift also found that users who engage with a specific help topic within a FAQ were much less likely to file a support ticket than those who merely used the Help section as a way of contacting the company for support. And the contact rate after viewing a specific FAQ dropped to 2 percent, or 1 in 50, which shows the efficacy of proactive in-app support. That tells you that people get an answer and move on with their lives, rather than seeking further help, Tripathy said.

Helpshift has raised $13.2 million and is backed by Intel Capital, True Ventures, Visionnaire Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners. Customers include Nexon M and Zynga.

“Some companies would have to have a much larger customer support staff if they weren’t using us,” Tripathy said.