HelpDeskPilot is a web based customer support system that is targeted at small and medium enterprises. Built totally on open source technologies, it is quick to install, configure and pick up speed with. It comes from the Chennai based Ten Miles Corporation, which is headed by Shalin Jain (their Web2.0 polling application, Tezza has been profiled earlier on this blog). HDP is not a new product; its been around for a while and is already being used by many customers. What is being released now is its new & improved version 2.

HDP is based on PHP and runs on a wide variety of platforms (webservers- Apache/IIS and OS- Windows/Linux/Unix). You need to download it and install it on your own servers. Besides English, it is also available in German, Dutch, French, Russian etc, which makes it a truly international product. You have a free version and three paid versions for differential price/feature combinations.

HDP works as a ticket based system where customer emails are converted into tickets. It has the typical features you would expect to find in a comprehensive customer support system; things like message threading, bifurcation into categories (departments), anti spam features etc. Something that caught my attention was the concept of a canned reply. A majority of the support emails are standard questions that customers ask over and over again. HDP has a feature called canned replies that lets you insert pre-defined messages into any reply by a single mouse click. Sounds great to me.

I haven’t tried out the product myself, but it looks impressive to me. Not just the core application, but the other things surrounding it as well- the website and its content, the pricing scheme, screenshots and demos etc. It gives the impression of a well designed overall pacakge. My impression may partly be influenced by the knowledge that the company behind HDP also dabbles in Web2.0 products, so its likely that some of the Web2.0 influence (i.e. simple design, easy workflow, clean interfaces etc) is getting carried over to this business application as well. (I must add that this is purely a speculative assumption and needs to be validated by actual usage).

I have recently been looking around for a customer support solution for one of our own products. I found numerous web based options, but most of them look too feature heavy, or seem to require considerable gestation periods before you could get to speed with them. What you really need (for most situations) is a simple, easy application that is up and running in a jiffy (37signals, a Web2.0 trendsetter actually uses Gmail as their support solution). As more web based businesses start springing up, the demand for such systems is going to increase. The need for simplicity gets accentuated, because the support & customercare staff is usually non technical and their ability to deal with complex interfaces and geeky workflows is highly questionable.

Something I would like the HDP team to consider is the option of a hosted version of their product. While that would undoubtedly require a fairly significant shift in strategy and orientation, the overwhelming trend in the CRM space is towards SAAS modelled hosted services. Companies like SAP, Oracle etc are having a tough time countering the onslaught of SAAS forerunners like Salesforce.com. This trend is likely to intensify in future, as the SME segment is likely have larger numbers of non tech-savvy, first generation entrepreneurs. For them, a hosted solution makes better sense than a installed version. Hosted solutions also encourage faster product trials, so they can help to scale the business much faster.

MyMuv is a site that attempts to track lifestyle changes and trends. It is currently in private beta and launching next week. MyMuv (as the name suggests) is a place where you can record and share the movements (muvs) in your likes/dislikes with regard to products, brands, places, people, ideas, concepts et al – anything that reflects your persona.

The site has been built by a bunch of internet enthusiasts in Bangalore, who describe themselves as being amongst the daily Dilberts but with a younger and fresh mind. They created mymuv as an escape from the drudgery of their professional lives. They have got angel funding from Netkode Innovations, Bangalore.

The site’s mascot is Treemy, an Asian Arowana fish, which is always muving around. You can create a free account (once the site goes public) and start of by posting your lifestyle changes (muv) and let others decide if your muv is happening or cool. You may post comments and opinions on muvs, keep track of other muvers etc. A muv is shown as “nike ≈ adidas“; if you click on adidas, it means you are moving from nike to adidas, whereas clicking on nike means the other way around. The site’s creators want users to get hooked on and eventually evolve this into a community focused on better lifestyles. The primary source of monetization will be contextual internet ads.

The creators of the site think that mymuv can help people make day to day decisions. There are many other recommendations options on the internet, but they suffer from one fundamental disadvantage- the lack of context. MyMuv works by letting you compare between two specific options, which is what you end up doing in real life situations. Whenever you consider a trend, it means a change. Most things evolve by organic change, rather than by creating something new. So tracking a trend means tracking a change. If more people are changing from A to B in less time, B is hot! (rate of change). It’s almost like a comparison rating zone with an edge.

I checked out the site (thanks Arun for the invite) and I think its visual design is very appealing. The choice of Treemy as a mascot seems appropriate. Overall this seems to be a cool, cute idea and that idea has been executed well. But I am not sure, if you can actually build a strong community around this concept. And if that’s true, it raises questions about the viability of this idea from a business perspective.

Something that strikes me as intriguing are the different applications people are creating to address personal decision making. There are Q&A options like YahooAnswers, polling applications like Zoho Polls, opinion engines like Tezaa, not to forget innumerable kinds/types of discussions boards or community forums. They are all aiming to help users harness the proverbial ‘wisdom of the crowds’ in matters of personal decision making. It remains to be seen if these applications can have a revenue model apart from internet advertising. I think its difficult, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.