Introducing Makkuro
What is Makkuro?
Makkuro unifies two different parts of a team's workflow into one cohesive tool. On one end you have the Helpdesk, where the team interacts with their users helping them with their problems, understanding their needs and, ultimately, taking down their feedback. And on the receiving end, you have the Issue Tracking tool, where the team collaborates on the work that needs to be done, tracks its progress, and releases it to eventually close the feedback loop.
For all the discussions and prompting towards software teams to be more user-centric, the tools we've been given have been pretty much siloed. You're probably very familiar with the problem of clicking an Intercom link with your user's feedback in your Linear ticket, only to face a login screen because you haven't been added to that tool, and then having to ask for a seat to be opened, and then waiting for the tool's owner to come online and grant you access.
For business owners, team leads, and product managers this is unnecessary friction which causes delays in a team's velocity. It causes unnecessary distractions to both the team and external teammates. It creates an information freezer where the most valuable resource of your startup is locked away and you always have to open the door to peak at it. You need a radiator instead.
What can you do with it?
Let's get into the details.
It all starts with a great DX
Your Makkuro experience starts with the integration of the Messenger component into your React application. There are no <script/ > tags to include, no github repos to dig into, no API to integrate with. Run npm install, grab your public key from the Dashboard, add your component in your app and in 2' you're ready to start receiving feedback from your users.
Customization of the style and the displayed content is usually the next requested step, so you will find plenty of options to make the Messenger look like it belongs to your app.
It needs to be as fast as your thoughts
Once you jump into the Helpdesk to reply to your users or the Issue Tracker to work on your team's tasks, you will notice that the app is fast. Really fast. We've put a lot of effort into making sure that the app is responsive and that everything shows up in your screen in less than 100ms. This is the industry standard for the user experience.
A new, but familiar, way to prioritize work
What is the most important thing you should be working on right now? Most of the time, and especially in the early stages of your product, it is solving the most pressing problems your customers are facing.
The essence of Makkuro is to help you do just that: you can connect the Conversations with your Tasks so that you can prioritize by the number of users that are facing the same problem.
It is a simple idea really, it just turned complex by the fast that the tools are siloed.
Closing the loop, or extending it
The good thing with having the Helpdesk and the Issue Tracker in the same app is that you can easily jump into the conversation to dig into the details or clarify things with the user.
The great thing with having the Helpdesk and the Issue Tracker in the same app is that you now have a list of the users you can notify that their issue has been resolved. This is one of the happiest moments in your startup journey and your tools should help you get as many of them as possible.
Everything you would expect from an Issue Tracker
I've focused on the things that Makkuro is doing well compared to the existing tools, but that doesn't mean that Makkuro stops there. You will find all the baseline features you would expect from an Issue Tracker, like Tasks, Subtasks, Projects, customizable Labels, customizable Statuses, Sprints, and more.
I invite you to checkout the Dashboard and try these features out.
Whoes does Beta mean?
First, I want to thank the participants of the Alpha period, their patient feedback has helped lay the ground work for what you are seeing today.
There are still many features to be added, creases to be ironed out and feedback to be heard, so I invite you to join the Beta period and help shape the future of Makkuro.
Pricing
Makkuro will be free for the Beta period, which is intended to last for a few months. After that, it will be 19$/month per user with no extra fees. We've tried to make it easy for startups and small teams to get the value of combining two tools into one.
The future
Obviously we are just getting started. The first version of the product has cherry picked some functionality from two different industries, these of Support work and Project Management, and will continue to expand on that. There are more feedback channels to capture, whether it is an email inbox or a public roadmap or a community integration, and more functionality to add to the Issue Tracker, such as leveraging AI to clean up your backlog or estimate your work (and finally automate these annoying workflows to oblivion).
But, ultimately, I believe that Makkuro is treading on a new path which just happens to cross through these two industries, and its future holds entering new ones with the goal of helping teams create better products for their users.
The Beta is the first public step we're taking publicly on this path and I'm inviting you to join us.
