Technology Stacks: Water Or Coconut Water?

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Technology Stacks
Image Credit: “TeraVesalainen on Pixabay

Flavored water — or anything other than water — might seem to have a better perception than “plain water out of the tap”.

Heck, we’d normally think that at least coconut water ought to be alright for a bit of healthy indulgence, but even that’s over-hyped.

Customer support solutions — and various other tools, processes, and everything else you have to do for business are like coconut water while water itself is the basis for all life on earth.

Great businesses are based on providing solutions for raging problems that people need solutions for, at scale.

For your business to really work, everything has to click.

Technology is here to make your job easier and it’s not here to replace you, as an entrepreneur.

You could shop for all the support desk tools, knowledge base software, live chat solutions, and support ticket management solutions you want but none of that would make any difference to your business if you miss the foundations that your business needs.

No Customer = No Customer Support

Entrepreneurs are visionaries. They like to think ahead. They want to plan things out even before they start. Nothing wrong with that really, except that sometimes, the planning goes too far. The vision can blur with extended envisioning; you see?

Learn to figure out what digital marketing channels work for your business, focus on those channels to get you traffic, and squeeze out email subscriptions from your audience (get them into the door without friction first).

That’s why it’s important to get your marketing funnels in place. Get the customers and then figure out how to hit the ball out of the park with your stellar customer support.

Respect Technology Stack Hierarchy

Although we might not think of it this way, businesses get technology foundations in place, but in different layers (depending on your business itself).

Consider a SaaS business:

  • Primary technology stack: What are the tools or the kind of Application Architecture that the SaaS tool is built with? What kind of technology stack runs under the hood to make the product work?).
  • Presentation stack: The product – what is it hosted on? How does it run? What’s the platform for the website of the SaaS business in question? (HTML/CSS? WordPress?)
  • Collaboration Stack: How do the teams communicate (Slack?). How do they plan projects? (Asana, Trello?)
  • Marketing Stack: What are the various tools used for the SaaS startup for marketing?
  • Customer Support Stack: What tools and processes are used to manage customers, customer support, onboarding, training, education, and other needs for business?

Now, your case will be different depending on your business. Assuming your business needs X, Y and Z tech stacks in that order – you just can’t skip one for the other.

Don’t look for Y when what you really need is X first.

Figure out Tech Stacks As You Go

Too many startups, businesses, and individuals get hung up on “decisions” – about ideas, teams, technology, marketing, and more. Agreed that decision-making is critical and it actually charts the path your business will tread on.

But then, action catapults you straight to the point midway between you and your entrepreneurial success.

You have plenty of options available today along with the technology you need (and you get to use what Amazon uses), a global pool of talent (freelancers and agencies, hello?), and the ease of using all of this in combination.

You could start and make changes as you grow your business. You’d know what to do since that experience teaches you everything you need to know and some more.

Stop looking for solutions before you need them.

How does your tech stack look like – for marketing, support, operations, and collaboration with teams?

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