CodeSandbox does the setup work for developer environments so you don’t have to. Here’s how they do support.

Why we love CodeSandbox

CodeSandbox is redefining the development experience with instant cloud development environments that remove any setup work required – so that developers can actually focus on building. It's the flexible coding environment of choice for more than 4 million developers every month.

We love CodeSandbox because it makes development so much more efficient and because of the care and thoughtfulness the team put in their user experience. The cloud environments are exactly what so many engineers need to drive their projects forward.

How CodeSandbox uses Plain

The support team at CodeSandbox currently consists of a small team with ad hoc help from the engineering team. The group helps customers with everything from bugs to billing issues. Beyond troubleshooting, they heavily invest time in connecting and engaging with users. They make a point in being part of key industry events because they know how important it is to engage with the developer community.

Before switching to Plain, CodeSandbox was using Front, but found it was too complex to use and hard to build with. CodeSandbox had been expanding its user base significantly, growing by 245% over two years.

“This was not without its challenges for support, which was part of what led us to Plain!” says Bas Buursma, Co-Founder of CodeSandbox.

“Ultimately we just wanted an efficient, effective and non-intrusive tool to support our user base,” says Buursma.

Using data to speed up support

The engineering team at CodeSandbox has invested in making support faster through better use of data. For example, they set up customer cards to display essential info about a customer in Plain and a quick link that redirects to a customer’s profile to be able to update account details easily, speeding up the time it takes to help a customer.

For frequently asked questions that can be resolved immediately, the team uses snippets to quickly send a templated response. If something can't be resolved immediately, they add the customer to a group called ‘Ongoing Issues’ to facilitate easy follow-ups.

For especially complex problems, the team pushes the question to a dedicated Slack channel set aside for support.

“The tool is customizable, yet with a solid core that keeps the platform always recognizable, even in the hands of somebody who would go a bit overboard. It facilitates good working relationships between developers and support-focused team members in creating efficiency improvements that wouldn’t be possible in a more rigid tool,” Buursma says.

Growing with Plain

One of the things Codesandbox loves about Plain is its simplicity. There aren’t "1,000 different menus with obscure features that a company who is no longer using the product may have requested 5 years ago." And equally, CodeSandbox loves the engagement from the Plain team.

To keep support running smoothly, Codesandbox has introduced new processes designed to provide continuous, reliable service, especially when the support lead is out of the office.

Codesandbox is excited about growing with Plain and has refined their own support workflow “to fully utilize Plains features and ensure that they’re resolving customer issues quickly."