Timoor Taufig and the small question that became a company

Before Userlike had a shared inbox, Timoor Taufig had an online shop to look after. He also managed his mother's cosmetics shop on the internet. The experience gave him something more useful than an abstract enthusiasm for ecommerce: a reason to care about the moment when a customer needs an answer. A shop can be open all night while remaining remarkably difficult to speak to.

Taufig tried existing live-chat tools and was dissatisfied. When he and software developer David Voswinkel began discussing a business together, the problem was already sitting on the counter. They wanted something that looked good and was easy to install and use. There was no need to invent shopping, or even chatting. There was work to do in the space between them.

The pair met in Cologne in 2010. Voswinkel brought years of software-development experience; Taufig brought his experience of running shops. Userlike followed in 2011. The origin matters because it gives the subsequent story a particular scale. Start with a customer who has a small question. Make answering it less troublesome. See how many other businesses have the same trouble.

A balcony counts as an office

The early company worked from an unheated apartment building on Cologne's Engelbertstrasse. A Seedmatch crowdfunding round helped it get moving. In its 2014 account of the business, the team put the number of crowd investors at about 170. Those backers also supplied advice and introductions. The company had customers to find, software to improve and a collection of people with an interest in both.

During 2013 and 2014, the founders worked across Cologne, Lisbon, Rotterdam and Iceland. A photograph from that period shows Taufig at work on a Lisbon balcony. The office furniture is modest; the daylight is rather better. Remote work was part of Userlike's early operating history, years before it became a standard argument about where everyone ought to sit.

A small Cologne office followed in 2015, then a larger space in 2017. The company's own retrospective records a milestone of 1,000 paying customers in that middle period. These were changes in how a group worked together as much as changes of address. A business that begins around a shared problem eventually needs a place, and a method, for sharing responsibility.

The pleasure of leaving things out

In 2013, Taufig was already talking about the person on the other side of the chat panel: the employee answering the questions. He wanted that person to enjoy using the software. It is an easily overlooked ambition in business software, where a long list of capabilities can pass for a pleasant working day.

“Simplicity rules,” he said. The surrounding argument was practical. Features should earn their place through actual use and customer feedback. German hosting and privacy controls were also part of his pitch. Ease of use had to coexist with the requirements of companies that would entrust the product with their customer conversations.

He was not proposing that customer service become a hobby. Userlike sold subscriptions, with free use leading to paid plans when businesses needed more. The commercial proposition depended on businesses finding enough value in quicker, easier conversations to keep paying. A cheerful interface still had to do a day's work. The pleasure of leaving things out lay in helping someone finish the task in front of them.

“Simplicity rules.”Timoor Taufig, 2013

Thirty minutes with a number

A visit to a trade office gave Taufig a particularly irritating example of the problem. He took a numbered ticket and waited half an hour. When his turn came, the administrator happened to be someone who had handled his previous case. She did not recognize him. Later, a fashion shop he used sent him an automated reply with another ticket number.

He turned the experiences into a 2019 essay about service. His objection was to a process that treated each encounter as an item on an assembly line. An efficient queue could still feel thoroughly impersonal. A returning customer might reasonably hope that the conversation could resume somewhere beyond the beginning.

The essay also acknowledged the awkward arithmetic. People often prefer lower prices, and better service costs money. His ambition was to enlarge the overlap between what customers wanted and what businesses could afford. That is a less comfortable brief than merely insisting that everyone be nicer. It asks the product to help make the economics work.

Following the conversation out of the browser

Website chat addressed a customer who was already visiting a business. Messaging offered a way to continue when that person went elsewhere. In January 2016, Userlike launched a beta of WhatsApp Connect, letting a service team answer WhatsApp messages through its chat panel. The website remained useful; the customer no longer had to remain on it.

By July, the company was testing Messenger Channels across Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS. Taufig described a future in which web support worked alongside those services. It was an expansion built around an existing habit: people already used messaging to speak to other people. Asking them to learn a special ritual for speaking to a business added another obstacle.

The idea acquired a concrete working example at Hermes. In a 2021 article co-written with its process manager Patrick Staufenbiel, Taufig described messaging and the parcel company's chatbot, Bo. Routine questions included delivery status and where a parcel had been left. Some tasks could be automated; others needed a service agent. The point of the arrangement was to get a useful answer to the customer without making that customer first become an expert in the company's channels.

Cologne, without the apology

Taufig's attachment to Cologne came with opinions. In 2018, he argued that founders could build there without assuming a move to Berlin was required. He valued an international team, helpful local networks and the possibility of exchanging advice over a Kölsch at Aachener Weiher. Apparently some business conversations can survive without a meeting invitation.

His affection was not indiscriminate. He wanted more startups, more productive competition and a city government that listened to founders. He asked for practical assistance with offices and infrastructure, and better connections between young companies and established industry. Liking a place, in his telling, included wanting it to get on with things.

There is a useful distinction in that stance. He could appreciate a smaller scene's openness while wanting it to grow. The aim was to make Cologne a more useful place to build, rather than treat location as an excuse. Carnival also figured in his account, as a reminder that the work should leave room for enjoyment. Even a software company need not spend every waking hour behaving like software.

The price of the next chapter

On April 27, 2021, Lime Technologies announced its agreement to acquire Userlike. The first stage covered 90 percent of the shares, with a preliminary purchase price of €19.8 million, subject to adjustments. The transaction completed on April 30. These were company acquisition terms, a different measure from any founder's personal wealth.

For Lime, the acquisition supplied messaging capabilities and an entry into Germany. For Taufig, it offered a way to accelerate the development of what he called a “Messaging CRM.” The fit paired Userlike's customer conversations with Lime's wider customer-relationship software. The announcement provided a financial milestone for an idea that had begun with online-shop questions.

Userlike subsequently became Lime Connect. The change in name belongs to the company's later history; Taufig's place in its origin remains clear. He co-founded the business and led it as CEO through the acquisition. A founder's story need not stop at the deal, but neither does the deal make every later company development a personal achievement.

A book can buy you a day off

Taufig also tried to change the arithmetic of learning at work. In a December 2021 account, he described a Userlike policy offering up to five extra days of leave for relevant learning outside regular hours. The company covered eligible learning costs, agreed goals with team leads and expected evidence that the work had been done.

Books counted alongside courses. A colleague could present what they had learned through the Userlike Book Club and discuss how it applied to the business. Taufig reported that about ten employees, roughly a quarter of the company, used the arrangement each year. The proposal addressed a familiar weakness of training budgets: available money does not automatically produce available enthusiasm after work.

The detail is revealing without requiring a grand theory of leadership. Here was a founder willing to put time off into the bargain. Learning had a benefit for the company, and the employee received something tangible in return. An unread professional-development book is excellent at collecting dust. This scheme gave it another possible career.

A different kind of score

Taufig's newer work includes Players For Good, co-founded with Anton Dornhof. The nonprofit connects sporting activity with donations through its Play For Good app. Its premise takes a familiar fundraising device, the sponsored sporting effort, and brings it into the recurring life of teams, players and supporters.

In describing the project publicly, Taufig asks whether the energy of sport can encourage more participation in giving. The emphasis is on small donations that become regular and easy to make. Basketball is the starting point. His public author biography had long listed playing basketball as a spare-time pursuit; now the court also supplies a setting for building something.

There are other chapters too. JoinMyTrip's current imprint names him as a director of its operator, JoinX GmbH. The work has moved beyond the first chat window. Yet the useful question survives: what gets in the way when a person is ready to act? Once it was a shopper trying to reach a business. Now it may be a player ready to turn a game into a contribution. Taufig has found more than one place to ask it.