How to Set Up a Discord Server for Your Small Business or Customer Support

More and more small businesses run a Discord server alongside their website: game studios, app makers, shops, coaches, agencies. Done well, it's a support desk, a feedback channel and a fan club in one. Done badly, it's an unanswered #support channel that makes you look closed.

This guide gives you a layout that's easy to staff, plus the permissions that keep it professional.

The layout

📢 START HERE

• #welcome: who you are and what this server is for
• #rules: short, including what not to share publicly
• #announcements: news, releases, outages (read-only)
• #faq: answers to the questions you get every week (read-only)

💬 COMMUNITY

• #general
• #showcase: customers share what they've made with your product
• #feedback: ideas and feature requests

🛟 SUPPORT

• #support: questions anyone can see and learn from
• #bug-reports
• #support-status: known issues and fixes in progress (read-only)

🔒 TEAM (staff only)

• #team-chat
• #support-handoff: notes when a question needs someone else
• #feedback-triage

🔊 VOICE

• 🔊 Office hours: regular drop-in sessions
• 🔊 Team room (staff only)

Roles

Role	Purpose	Key permissions
Owner	You	Administrator (one or two people only)
Team	Staff who answer questions	Manage Messages, Manage Threads; sees the Team category
Customer or Verified	Optional, for verified buyers	Access to customer-only channels
@everyone	Everyone else	Read and post in public channels

Give your team a visible role color so customers can tell who's official. Turn on Display role members separately for Team so staff show at the top of the member list.

Support that scales

Use a forum channel for support

A busy #support text channel turns into a mess of overlapping conversations. A forum channel gives each question its own thread, with tags like billing, bug, how-to and solved. It's easier to answer, easier to search, and customers can find earlier answers before asking. See forum channels explained.

Keep personal details out of public channels

Your rules and your #support description should both say: never post order numbers, emails, addresses or payment details publicly. If you need them, ask the customer to use your normal support email or form.

Set expectations

Put your support hours in the channel topic, like "We answer Mon to Fri, 9 to 5 (UTC). Weekend questions are answered Monday." People are patient when they know what to expect.

Answer once, link forever

When the same question comes up three times, add it to #faq. Then answer the next person with a link.

Permissions checklist

• #announcements, #faq and #support-status are read-only for @everyone. See how to make a read-only channel.
• The Team category is hidden from @everyone and open to Team.
• @everyone can't mention @everyone or create webhooks.
• Only owners hold Administrator.
• AutoMod blocks spam links and mass mentions. See our AutoMod guide.

Announcements customers can follow

If your customers run their own Discord servers, as with a game, a bot or a tool, turn #announcements into an announcement channel. They can then follow it, and your release notes appear in their servers automatically. See announcement channels explained.

Mistakes to avoid

1. An unstaffed support channel. If you can't answer within a day, say so in the topic.
2. Support in DMs. Answers in public help the next person too.
3. Too many channels. A small business server rarely needs more than the layout above.
4. Staff with Administrator. Give the team only what the job needs. See roles and permissions explained.

Build it with Cordary

Describe your business to Cordary, for example "a server for our app's customers with support, feedback, release announcements and a private team area", and it drafts the channels, roles and permissions, and can write your welcome, rules and FAQ posts. You review every change before it happens.