Why Neeto Doesn’t Do Traditional Marketing or Use AI to Deflect Tickets

Recently, I attended Rails World in Amsterdam. A lot of folks there asked about Neeto. We ended up talking about the challenges of running a consulting company (BigBinary) while also building a product (Neeto).

The conversations were awesome, but two questions kept coming up:

1. Why isn’t Neeto doing any marketing?

2. Why isn’t Neeto using AI to deflect support tickets?

I’ll share my thoughts on both of these points here.

It’s true. We don’t do "marketing" the way most companies do. We don’t have a marketing team. We don’t run paid ads. We don’t send cold emails. We don’t collect email lists for campaigns. We don’t post on social media as often as we should (mostly because no one is dedicated to it).

The reason is simple: we compete on price. Our pricing is very, very low.

Here’s how I see the usual cycle:

1. Companies charge customers.

2. They hand over part of that money to Google (ads).

3. That brings them new customers.

4. Repeat.

But since ads cost money, you need to charge higher prices.

At Neeto, we skip step 2. We don’t give money to Google—we give it back to our customers in the form of lower pricing. That’s why we don’t do traditional marketing.

Almost all customer tools allow answering questions using AI. However, we don't use it. We don't use it because we don't want to deflect support tickets.

We welcome support tickets. Rather than deflecting those tickets I would prefer to engage with our customers while answering the questions.

Very often, while answering the support questions, I ask them if they are available for a quick video call. Some say yes and I get on a call. In the call the primary function is to resolve their issues but I also learn so much about how they use Neeto products.

I learn why they are asking for what they are asking for. A few more whys and then I get to know "ahh..I see if I fix this thing here then the problem will be solved in a better way". If I hadn't gotten on the call, I would have never learned that.

Not using AI in many cases means a delayed answer to the customer. Yes, sometimes we answer their questions a bit late, only when support teams are working. But what our style ensures is that a real human being answers every single question. My personal experience of using AI tools for customer support has not been great.

One day, when we reach Shopify scale, we will have no choice but to use an AI tool as our first line of defense. However, today we are not there yet. And for the next few years, we are going to continue supporting customer queries by having a real human being reply to the questions.

Here’s how I look at it: every interaction with a company is marketing.

The website design is marketing.

Every tweet is marketing.

Deciding whether or not to use AI is marketing.

Taking customer queries seriously - that’s marketing.

Not deflecting tickets with AI - that’s marketing.

Jumping on a call with a customer - that’s marketing.

Using too many emojis or no emoji in a blog post is marketing.

Using memes or not using them is marketing.

Me, the founder of Neeto, personally doing support and hopping on calls? That’s marketing too. Writing this blog is marketing. Talking to folks about Neeto at Rails World—that’s marketing.

Yes. We don’t have a marketing team. But we do have a customer support team, and honestly, I consider them our best marketing team.

Think about it: someone signs up for Neeto. They hit an issue. Instead of silently quitting, they take the time to write us a support ticket.

Our job is to respond clearly, resolve the issue fully, and make sure they leave that interaction with confidence in Neeto. To me, that’s the best marketing we could ever do.