Give Lively’s customer support team is the front line of help for our active membership of approximately 9,000 nonprofits and their donors. Today, we’re amazed to announce that, since Give Lively's start in 2015, the customer support team has handled 100,000 “conversations,” which are start-to-finish chats and emails initiated by donors or members.

Customer support matters

Give Lively emphasizes timely and effective customer support as a key component of the service we provide. We also take special pride in our team’s human touch at a time when tech support can sometimes feel too automated. 

We do have an AI-driven chat bot, which has an encyclopedic understanding of our platform, but it is used for speedy initial contact and to gather directive details that are fed to the next open customer support specialist who connects with a user. The bot also helps when our customer support team is unavailable. 

Our skilled, experienced and tight-knit support team actively resolves queries via email and chat. Current typical support hours for live chat are 9am-7pm ET and via email from 8am-8pm ET, Monday through Friday, and 10am-6pm ET on Sundays. 

Fast first responders

When members or donors hit a roadblock with Give Lively technology, we encourage them to reach out to us for troubleshooting. We then endeavor to respond as quickly as possible at each step of the conversation. We are extremely proud of our customer service record:

In fact, our team’s success in reacting to requests has been so outstanding that we are officially lowering our target response time from four hours to two hours, during normal operating hours. 

“The work our customer support team does to help our members find success in myriad ways constantly impresses me,” said Kelsey Marshall, Vice President of Customer Experience. “With nearly 27 years of combined tenure on our team, our goal is to find creative and straightforward solutions for each of our members, as well as navigate donors’ questions to make sure they feel appreciated and confident in their support of our nonprofit community. The fact that our team is able to receive such high scores, while maintaining responsiveness, speaks to the connections we form in our conversations and the passion we feel for the experience on our platform. We’re so grateful as a team to have a hand in the millions of dollars raised through Give Lively for so many important and powerful causes.”

Great met expectations

In their own words, here are some reflections from the customer support team about recent interactions, demonstrating the personalized handling and positive conclusions we favor.

"One of the things that makes Give Lively an easy-to-use platform for our members is our Donation Widgets. They allow for our member nonprofits to embed fundraising pages on their own website, saving donors the trouble of having to visit a different website to donate. The nature of software, however, means that sometimes embedding these widgets comes with some confusion or difficulty, which we're always happy to help with. I remember one particular issue that involved some code on the nonprofit's website that made it look odd on mobile devices. After getting our engineering team's help on a solution, I received this response from the nonprofit: ‘Please pass along my thanks to the team, that worked great!’"
- Roderick, Senior Support Specialist

“Some of my favorite interactions are when members write to us frustrated about functionality they have a misunderstanding about. I'm able to break the information down to them in a way that allows them to better grasp how our platform works and turn their entire experience around. They always end up being grateful for Give Lively's support team.” 
- Julicia, Customer Support Specialist

“I always enjoy working with member nonprofits who ask for me directly by name, knowing that I can help them quickly and that they trust me enough to assist, or asking me for advice on how to better use the platform.” 
- Tai, Customer Support Specialist

“To mention recent activity, working with nonprofits affected by the California delinquency issue to get their Give Lively membership accounts re-enabled has been very rewarding. Knowing the work nonprofits have to do to get their accounts to a “current” status, I feel good when I get to tell them their Give Lively accounts are enabled for fundraising again.” 
- Hillary, Customer Support Specialist

“My favorite interactions with our members are when I get to help them use our products in a way that meets exactly what they’re looking for – setting up an Event Ticketing page, the media on their newest Campaign Page or going over how their community can get involved through our Peer-to-Peer Fundraising pages. Walking nonprofits through the technical aspects of setting things up on our platform can sound daunting, but when it ends up being just what they’re hoping for, we get to celebrate together. Seeing them go off prepared and successful in improving their communities and our world is the best part of working here!”
- Kirsten, Customer Support Lead

Learn more about how Give Lively supports its members through the customer service team, online resources, collaborative product development, webinars, trainings and pre-recorded courses.

‍Read about some best practices when reaching out to customer support.