bDAO Product Support Center Season 3 Proposal [REVISION]

PROJECT CHAMPIONS

nonsensetwice#3475, Steff#7452, zrowgz#4358

ORIGINAL DOC: Dropbox Paper

PROGRAM NAME & MULTISIG ADDRESS

BanklessDAO Product Support Center

0x3625Ad553A38A647B0Dedb0b176c3b97a8dc2f8D

CONTENTS

  • Clicking on any of these links will take you to the original document

I. Summary

II. Background

III. Mission & Aligned Values

IV. Specification

V. Revenue Opportunities

VI. Roles

VII. Financial Implications

VIII. Success Metrics

IX. Author Background

X. Relevant Links

SUMMARY

The BanklessDAO (hereafter “bDAO”) products are becoming powerful tools for supporting the growth of bDAO and other communities. These products are rapidly coming to market. Being live in numerous servers necessitates having a place where users can reach out and find help in using these new products, suggesting feedback, and helping others to create a community of people enthusiastic about the growth of the product.

The bDAO Product Support Center will be a place where users can come to get help with any bDAO product. This service would be made available to any project, product, or team within bDAO. This would allow for a less overwhelming experience than attempting to seek the support within the bDAO server and also take the strain off of the ever-increasing channel count in the bDAO server. The user-facing support documentation is currently being developed via GitBook with the purpose of creating a one-stop shop where all support documentation will be found.

BACKGROUND

This initially started as a side project of DEGEN, where instead of attempting to support users through DMs, or within the main bDAO server, the DEGEN Workgroup created a Product Support Center to fulfill the growing need to provide product support for DEGEN’s POAP feature set. This provided a more open and decentralized way to communicate support news and important updates with all users and teams. Additionally, this support included helping users get DEGEN up and running on their server, answering individual questions, educating on DEGEN’s functionality, gaining feedback, and checking the pulse on what additional features might be desired to inform product development.

With DEGEN now in 100 servers, this demand is likely to increase. The Product Support Center has been well received by DEGEN’s user community and has made it possible for the team to focus on feature development while achieving a high level of client satisfaction. Looking at bDAO’s vibrant ecosystem, we believe many projects will soon be in a similar situation where they’ll need to provide client support for their products and services, both internally and externally. DEGEN’s existing support center is situated to become a DAO-wide endeavor to provide a single point of contact for everything support-related and to ensure a unified and high quality customer experience across all bDAO products and services.

The bDAO Product Support Center has seen a significant growth in users over the latter half of Season 2, continuing on into early Season 3. With this single product, DEGEN, now being live in over 100 servers, the average rate of new joiners has climbed to approximately 10-20 users per day, growing from 100 users at the beginning to currently just shy of 500. This growth has allowed for improved client interactions, and has allowed for greater engagement in the DEGEN user community. As the bDAO Product Support Center has evolved, we have seen the user community grow to engage with and support one another, over and above the support offered by bDAO and DEGEN staff.

The bDAO Product Support Center will be made available to any team or project that desires to have support offered for their product. This will help alleviate the congestion within the main bDAO server and offer participating teams and projects the opportunity to build communities around the support of their respective products.

As part of this endeavor, we have developed user guides for the products being created, which includes documentation with graphics & how-to videos demonstrating the operation of the product. There is significant growth opportunity in helping to replicate this for any of the bDAO products that are being developed and soon to be deployed.

With the rapid increase in users in the server, we have also begun developing strategies useful in access, moderation, and coordination. These services will also be available to bDAO at large if desired, in helping to establish the newest methods for preventing spam and reducing the proliferation of malicious bots.

MISSION & ALIGNED VALUES

The mission of the bDAO Product Support Center is to improve the ease of access to the ecosystem of products being created within bDAO. In the long term, this is mission-aligned with the DAO’s goal of onboarding 1 billion people into crypto. The greater the ease in which external communities can utilize bDAO products and services, the more effort users can place in areas that will help continue to drive the adoption of cryptocurrencies and related services.

The bDAO Product Support Center will be available to anyone wishing to utilize it, and will make this more accessible to external clients looking to get support on a product by having a location and support community readily available 24/7. This will also allow the teams and projects to maximize their productivity by having the support routed for them, with user errors and basic questions answered by the support team and surrounding community.

This will also promote equality and openness, as well as maximize the utilization of the bDAO resources:

  • Equality: available to any bDAO team, project, or product.
  • Openness: allows anyone to participate, gives a structured location where discussions can happen in public rather than back room chats for help requests, which can then benefit future users experiencing similar issues.
  • Maximize resource allocation and utilization: allows teams to have a shared location where basic support questions can be resolved without the intervention of more expensive dev teams; allows for the collection of common questions and issues to be readily added to the user guides; and builds a community of clients who are highly engaged with the product and can offer suggestions for improvements, which will enhance the value of bDAO’s products and services.

SPECIFICATION

This proposal advocates for the expansion of the bDAO Product Support Center to meet the anticipated demand for Season 3, such as:

  • further the growth and adoption of Bankless-related products hosting their support on the server,
  • working closely with mature bDAO projects, such as Bounty Board, to integrate product support solutions. This will include working closely with the project champion or assigned representative to help train and educate the bDAO Product Support Team on the products being integrated,
  • Work with projects to provide training and product demonstrations for both support staff and clients,
  • promote the bDAO Product Support Center for the purpose of creating a DAO-wide product support solution with a unified client experience, high quality client service, and high level of client satisfaction, and
  • encourage participant engagement by way of:
    • Hosting live demonstrations of each product.
    • Hosting AMA sessions where product promoters can answer any questions users may have and obtain feedback on their services.
    • Broadcasting weekly announcements for product updates.
    • Enabling tipping within the server so when other users provide assistance to one another, they can be rewarded.
    • Offering POAPs for attending scheduled events.

REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES

Currently, the bDAO Product Support Center operates as a public good for bDAO products and services getting off the ground. As these products and services arrive at solvency, they will need to provide compensation to the bDAO Product Support Center for continued access to the staff and systems provided by the Center. In the interim, the bDAO Product Support Center will request full funding for two to three seasons, with the anticipation that within this time frame, at least a few bDAO products will be solvent and capable of providing revenue sharing with the bDAO Product Support Center. Following seasons will see a reduction in funding requests to the Grants Committee, as costs are offset by successful bDAO products and services.

In addition, given the current success of the bDAO Product Support Center in supporting DEGEN, multiple protocols and their underlying communities have considered establishing their own support servers, requesting assistance from the bDAO Product Support Team. This suggests a market exists where this support model can be replicated, meaning the potential exists to offset bDAO Product Support Center costs with contributions from external communities in the future. This will be explored at length as the bDAO Product Support Center continues to evolve.

ROLES

To accomplish all the terms of the program, the proposed bDAO Product Support Center will consist of three salaried positions:

  1. Support Lead
  • The Support Lead will work to manage the support staff and provide direction for the entire support server. This position includes overseeing and assisting in the development of support material and content for the purpose of assisting internal & external organizations in the use of bDAO products and services. The Support Lead will also follow up with community managers and admins on their use of said products and services, collect and compile feedback, and maintain a direct line of communication with project managers and developers.
  1. Technical Investigator
  • The Technical Investigator will streamline the process between clients and product developers by utilizing logs and semi-technical options; review logs when users report issues; attempt to return functionality of the product without project developer intervention; manage the server and create access controls which include assigning bots for verification and spam filtering; streamline support server functionality based on the specifications defined by the Support Lead; and work to integrate the support needs of new products into the bDAO Product Support Center.
  1. bDAO Product Support Staff
  • The support personnel will serve to field questions, comments, and concerns; handle matters of education within the Product Support Center and work to guide conversations where the community at large can get involved; acquire and pass on those issues and inquiries containing a high level of technical depth to the project developers directly; and serve to make the bDAO product user experience as painless as possible.

Additionally, a pool of 60k BANK is being requested to pay out bounties to incentivize community participation, as well as for the creation of digital materials such as A/V products and commission POAP designs for support and education related events.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Role User Funding Allocation ( in BANK )
Support Lead Steff#7452 195,000
Technical Investigator/Support Staff zrowgz 130,000
Support Staff 91,000
Bounty Pool - 60,000
Total: 476,000

The total amount being requested for Season 3 is 476,000 BANK, with the flexibility to submit a proposal for remuneration for the weeks in excess of 13 weeks for Season 3 that extend beyond this limit. The salaries are loosely calculated using the old structure of 1000 BANK/hr with a sliding scale of 7 to 15 hours a week based on the level of responsibility, and the simple fact that as bDAO produces more offerings, the workload will naturally increase. Please consider : these amounts are based on hours that are negatively padded to compensate for the fact that the DAO is still working on a proper compensation structure, meaning that the support staff is putting in more hours than is reflected in this proposal.

SUCCESS METRICS

  • Product Growth:
    • The bDAO Product Support Center currently supports 2 bDAO products:
      • Internally, Mad Hatter, the discord bot used for poaps, coordinape, and other administrative tasks, and
      • Externally, DEGEN, which is used by 100 servers for POAP management and distribution.
    • With this funding, we would like to increase the number of bDAO products being supported. There are currently several products beginning to spread to other servers and onboarding them into the bDAO Product Support Center would be optimal.
  • Participant Growth:
    • Currently, the bDAO Product Support Center supports products in 100 servers with approximately 500 users in the support server, which amounts to approximately 5 users per server, on average. Of those 5, approximately 2 of them engage with the team for support.
    • We will grow the number of active participants in the bDAO Product Support Center per community that utilizes bDAO products, over and above working to increase the number of communities utilizing those products.
    • As part of the prior point, a marketing element is introduced by way of organic growth. As users engage with the support community and understand the various use cases of different bDAO products and services, there is a high likelihood that these products and services will naturally be picked up by community managers, moderators, and admins who recognize the benefit to their respective communities.
  • Product feedback:
    • User suggestions for improvement currently route to the specific team’s product through a ticketing service.
    • A weekly review of product feedback or new feature requests with the development team of each respective product will be performed to assess whether these requests are viable, what the time frame for execution would look like, and if there is a cost associated with that additional development. Communicate these updates to the requesting users to provide closed loop communications and ensure users feel heard.

AUTHOR BACKGROUND

Steff has a background in customer support and client management. She joined bDAO in Season 2 and due to her active involvement with the DEGEN Workgroup and support in the Knowledge Sessions, quickly acquired the status of a Level 1 member. As part of the DEGEN support staff, she helped the team administratively and assisted in the development of the bDAO Product Support Center. bDAO has positively impacted her professional experience to the extent that she went full time DAO in the short amount of time that she has been contributing.

ZrowGz is an active Level 2 Contributor of bDAO. In Season 0, he began as support staff for DEGEN and the Writers Guild, which earned him a position as the Project Ambassador in Season 1. During Season 1 as the DEGEN Ambassador, he interfaced with internal bDAO teams to collect feedback and offer support for projects and guilds interested in leveraging the work the DEGEN Workgroup was exploring. This developed into working relationships with many external communities in Season 2, where he created a coordination and communication system with server admins, moderators, and community managers throughout the DeFi ecosystem as part of an ongoing initiative to get them onboarded with DEGEN. In Season 2, he also worked closely with nonsensetwice and Steff to initiate the bDAO Product Support Center. ZrowGz currently spends his DAO time operating between his responsibilities as Project Ambassador for the DEGEN Workgroup and serving as Technical Investigator for the bDAO Product Support Center.

RELEVANT LINKS

Approve bDAO Product Support Center Funding
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

4 Likes

With growth and vision comes proper planning and product positioning as well as expense. No one knows for sure what was wise and when wisdom will prove out but I believe this is a major step forward to a long term satisfied customer base and will enhance our brand significantly. Thanks big brains. Love your energy, talent and efforts.

3 Likes

Having a dedicated product support center that new products can hitch onto is going to be critical for the “DAO as Incubator” offering.

Governator will immediately benefit from this product, so we’re voting yes!

6 Likes

What’s the difference between this post and the original one? BanklessDAO Product Support Center Season 3 Budget Proposal

Honestly it feels like I’m reading almost the exact same thing verbatim, it would help me if you could call attention to the differences.

Thanks!

This is a vital part of infrastructure for bDAO if we want offer our products and services to others. Having a single server will help to prevent replicating work unnecessarily.

No one answered my question, so I’ll just post a potential idea into the void.

How about the Grants Committee commits to providing some fixed amount of funding to some products which you are currently supporting specifically earmarked for product support (ie 75k BANK to DEGEN and BB)? This funding could be above and beyond any other funding request and be deducted from this proposed support budget.

That way, these products have funding to pay for support, support center is aligned to provide 75k BANK worth of support to each product, and also have time/space to work on your long-term vision.

This would align incentives more directly IMO. The way the proposed funding structure works, you could end up putting a lot of effort on a single support product without ever putting effort towards your long-term goals.

How many products do you currently support and how much of your time do you spend on each @Steff and @ZrowGz ?

1 Like