The support volume curve
0-50 buyers: ~5 tickets/week, manageable solo. 50-200 buyers: ~25 tickets/week, eats your evenings. 200-500: ~80 tickets/week, eats your life. 500+: 200+ tickets/week, requires real ops. Each transition needs new tools — what works at 50 buyers breaks at 500.
The canned-reply library — your first 15 templates
Top 15 questions cover 80% of tickets. Build templates for: order is 'in progress' (link to processing-time page), refill request flow, password reset, deposit not credited, service quality complaint, refund request, child-panel inquiry, API access request, custom service request, bulk order quote, payment method down, account verification, suspension appeal, cancellation request, partnership inquiry. Each template: 2-4 sentences, friendly tone, includes the next action.
SLAs that match buyer expectations
Public commitment: 'replies within 4 business hours, M-F.' Internal target: 90 minutes during business hours. Critical issues (payment failed, account locked) under 30 minutes. Posting an SLA reduces ticket anxiety — buyers who know they'll hear back in 4 hours don't escalate. Buyers who don't know assume you've vanished and chargeback.
Escalation flow
Tier 1 (VA): all standard tickets, refill requests, password resets, FAQ-level questions. Tier 2 (you): refund disputes, suspected fraud, technical bugs, child-panel issues, gateway failures. Tier 3 (PerfectPanel support): platform-level bugs, billing issues with PerfectPanel, gateway integration problems. Document this flow so the VA knows when to escalate without asking.
Hiring a VA — the exact process
Post on OnlineJobs.ph or LatAm Slack groups. Ad spec: '$5/hr, 25-30 hr/week, English fluent, gaming/social-media literate, Discord + ticket system experience.' Screen 20 applicants → 5 interviews → 2-week paid trial. Onboard with: 15-page Notion runbook, 5 Loom videos walking through admin, daily Slack check-in for first 2 weeks. Productivity ramp: 30% week 1, 70% week 2, 90%+ by week 4. Total ramp investment: ~15 hrs of your time.
Tooling stack
PerfectPanel's built-in tickets (avoid email entirely — no SLA tracking). Notion for the canned-reply library + runbooks. Loom for video walkthroughs (faster than writing for complex stuff). Discord for VA team chat. Optional: Crisp or Intercom widget on the storefront for pre-sales chat only — DO NOT use for support (raises expectations you can't meet at scale).
The metrics that matter
Track weekly: tickets created, median first-response time, median resolution time, % escalated to tier 2, ticket-to-order ratio (tickets per 100 orders). Healthy panel: under 8 tickets per 100 orders. Above 12 = service quality or UX bug. Above 20 = something is fundamentally broken (provider failures, payment issues, unclear pricing) and support is the symptom, not the disease.