As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

My app is simple and easy to use, and I've made "Training Videos" for just about everything you can do with, and I've had years to work out any bugs that have popped up, so I don't get a lot of calls anymore. But every call is a chance to learn something and improve the app and I pay very close attention to those who call.

My approach is that it's never the user's fault, and I tell them that. I work click by click with them to show them how to do something and I tell them if something doesn't work it's my fault and I will fix it. And I also ask them how they think it should work.

Before I made my first app back in the `90s I read a book Apple put out called something like "Apple Human Interface Guidelines". At first glance I thought it was a waste of money, but since I'd spent it I decided to read it all.

It explained some of the history of the Apple GUI and how and why things were designed the way they were, which was basically on things people were familiar with, like "Radio Buttons" and "Checkboxes", etc.

By the time I was done I realized the genius in the approach. I'm still impressed with it. My goal has been to make web apps that the user doesn't have to learn anything to use. That it all works like they expect it should. After 15+ years I've got pretty close now. I rarely get any calls or emails.

Kind of feel like the "Maytag Man" now.

Due to a variety of factors, my previous employer provided about 50-50 phone and email support, often with phone as the first point of contact. That worked because phone calls came in with proper context (essentially providing information about who is calling and information about their account status) and I had tools to guide callers when something wasn't extremely basic: most applications are primarily visually- or textually-rich environments, and verbal descriptions require a high degree shared context on both sides (e.g. you are a competent CCNA contacting Cisco TAC, and both parties share a common verbal language to describe non-verbal tools). Absent that, screen-sharing capability is critical, as otherwise phone support is endless dead air of "I'm looking at things you can't see while you describe things I can't see and have no context for, let's both black box everything and pray for telepathy." My current employer doesn't provide that, so phone support devolves into a push button for customers to say, "this issue is urgent!" while support says "probably, but we can't send you screenshots over the phone, so please go away while we write a response that actually provides useful information--you can remain on the phone if you want, but it's going to just be dead air or us talking you down from panic mode while not actually doing anything to address the problem."

I'm sure there are a set of users who wish your app worked in one way, while another set of users feel strongly that it works in an opposing way. How do you reconcile that?