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Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

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Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#31

Post by tombot »

Macha wrote: post #9

Feature flags is usually how we handle this. We have the flags anyway for developer use, so making them user specific was not that much incremental effort though we have had a few cases where old workflows were not removed when they should have been. We did once have a customer with their own environment with a different version deployed, as they were initially a major client with such demands but after a few years i…

+1 for flags, you can also put features into production earlier, safe knowing they will only be visible for the users / teams you’ve added to the list

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#32

Post by feifan »

ambivalents wrote: post #28
Arubis wrote: post #23

Most of the discussion here will be technical, especially around feature flags and friends. That’s fine, but please don’t miss out that this is a clear signal to charge these customers a lot more money.

> a clear signal to charge these customers a lot more money. Interesting, can you explain this a little more? Some of our customers chomp at the bit for particular features, and when we can we give them early access. We do not charge them more for arguably huge amounts of value add to the product. I wonder how to have these types of conversation, internally and with users. I'm a PM but have a direct line to managemen…

If you also have a direct line to your users, you could try asking them how much they'd be willing to pay for either some new feature that's about to come out, or for the right to early-access. Get maybe 3–5 data points and you should have a pretty solid case to management (either to charge retroactively for existing features, to charge new users for existing features, or to charge all users for upcoming features).

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#33

Post by exolymph »

ambivalents wrote: post #28
Arubis wrote: post #23

Most of the discussion here will be technical, especially around feature flags and friends. That’s fine, but please don’t miss out that this is a clear signal to charge these customers a lot more money.

> a clear signal to charge these customers a lot more money. Interesting, can you explain this a little more? Some of our customers chomp at the bit for particular features, and when we can we give them early access. We do not charge them more for arguably huge amounts of value add to the product. I wonder how to have these types of conversation, internally and with users. I'm a PM but have a direct line to managemen…

As a smaller-scale contractor I just tell people what I charge. If they're not willing to play ball* get to premium compensation, no deal. It's cliché but BATNA is everything.

*I'm willing to play ball too, e.g. for a staff position I might take extra vacation in lieu of more cash, tradeoffs like that. But basically I'm not gonna take on extra hassle without being incentivized — because I don't have to and don't want to, all there is to it

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#34

Post by Hamuko »

If a large customer wants to decide when they get new features, they need to pay for their own dedicated environment that is on a separate release cycle. Otherwise they need to adapt to our release schedules and make sure they get all the previewing that they need on a test environment.

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#35

Post by villasv »

We pick those customers to be beta testers. They receive pre-release features, but in return they must accept possible bugs will happen (of course, when one is identified we give them the choice of disabling the feature immediately).

The schedule is totally in our hands, though. Once we say it’s time to go GA, it goes. At this point there still are feature toggles, though, just in case.

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#37

Post by ghiculescu »

Lots of good answers below on how to make it work, how you should charge more, etc.

Remember that saying no is also an option. You aren’t obliged to say yes just because someone asks for something you don’t sell, even if they are willing to pay.

For most SaaS there’s no logical reason why having a feature for 2 extra weeks would be an enormous advantage to a customer. In my experience what this question really is is “can we make last minute change requests to a feature you thought was done”. I’m not keen to guarantee that, so it’s a simple no, sorry, we can’t do that. It’s yet to be a deal breaker.

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#38

Post by cosmodisk »

I really like how Salesforce do it: they make an announcement that a feature/fix will be available from day x and depending on its importance, they then give 100,200,500 days or whatever to install it or it gets installed automatically on the deadline day. This gives plenty of notice to customers to prepare( updates can break some customisation on client's instance).

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#39

Post by stronglikedan »

zippergz wrote: post #22
mooreds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds to me like the customer is trying to solve a problem and is coming to you with their chosen solution. My suggestion: Find out what problem they are trying to solve, and address that. This. Problems they might be trying to solve: * want to be able to jump on new features as soon as they are released, but need to plan with the eng team * want to be "in the know" so not surprised by new features * want to be ab…

Honestly some customers I've encountered have asked for stuff like this (and similarly meetings to go over product roadmap) almost as a power play. Either to see if they can get us to do it, or to feel like they have control over our development. If you're small enough and the customer is big enough, you might not have any choice, but I resist it pretty strongly unless it would be financially ruinous to lose the cust…

Reminds me of when Disney wanted us to do a considerable amount of unpaid work, simply because they were Disney. We don't do business with Disney any more.

Re: Ask HN: Handling customers that want feature previewing?

#40

Post by void_mint »

stronglikedan wrote: post #39
zippergz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly some customers I've encountered have asked for stuff like this (and similarly meetings to go over product roadmap) almost as a power play. Either to see if they can get us to do it, or to feel like they have control over our development. If you're small enough and the customer is big enough, you might not have any choice, but I resist it pretty strongly unless it would be financially ruinous to lose the cust…

Reminds me of when Disney wanted us to do a considerable amount of unpaid work, simply because they were Disney. We don't do business with Disney any more.

In retrospect, was it the right move?
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