Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

plumshell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 147 posts

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#81

Post by PetahNZ »

danso wrote: post #41
whalesalad wrote: post #13

Working at the Apple Store as a sales person has helped me IMMENSELY in my career, not only in terms of understanding how human beings approach technology but from a sales standpoint as well. In the first startup I was a part of, every single member of the 3 person team did email support for our school teacher userbase. Do it. Everyone needs to do it. Doing this kind of work is very grounding and humbling. When you b…

Or if you can't switch jobs just yet, and you have time to kill at an Apple store, sit in on one of their daily tech sessions. I once went with my mom to the "Basics: iPad" session and couldn't believe how basic the topics were in the description [0]. But the attendees had even more fundamental issues than could be covered, such as file management, e.g. how to move a photo from the iPad to their home desktop hooked t…

As a developer, a backend app developer for that matter, I still don't know an easy way to do this. I would either sync it to my Google Drive, or fire up a local FTP server on my phone to do it.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#82

Post by amelius »

SyneRyder wrote: post #18
whalesalad wrote: post #13

Working at the Apple Store as a sales person has helped me IMMENSELY in my career, not only in terms of understanding how human beings approach technology but from a sales standpoint as well. In the first startup I was a part of, every single member of the 3 person team did email support for our school teacher userbase. Do it. Everyone needs to do it. Doing this kind of work is very grounding and humbling. When you b…

To emphasize "don't think it's beneath you to talk to customers", there's the story of when William from Microsoft took a phone support call: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=...

It's easy to have a good attitude when it's not your main line of work.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#83

Post by caio1982 »

whalesalad wrote: post #13

Working at the Apple Store as a sales person has helped me IMMENSELY in my career, not only in terms of understanding how human beings approach technology but from a sales standpoint as well. In the first startup I was a part of, every single member of the 3 person team did email support for our school teacher userbase. Do it. Everyone needs to do it. Doing this kind of work is very grounding and humbling. When you b…

I consider this to be a very valuable advice no matter you work with software engineering or not; it's useful for any slightly complicated business from a costumer POV.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#84

Post by nathan_f77 »

I'm also a solo developer, and I take support and sales phone calls for FormAPI [1]. I found a nice number on Twilio: (856) FORM-API

I have a license for on-site deployments, and I think every enterprise inquiry has started with a phone call.

I also send a welcome email to new customers where I say that I'm happy to have a call to talk about their requirements or questions. I also use Drift [2] for live chat, and I've handled a few support cases on there.

My advice: I don't think this is an optional thing. You don't solve the problem by removing the phone number from your site. If you're getting too many calls, you need to improve your self-help support pages, or hire another person to help with the phones.

[1] https://formapi.io

[2] http://drift.com

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#85

Post by tomcooks »

erader wrote: post #50
cyberferret wrote: post #11

I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, pr…

Hi there! Support manager here. I've been leading support teams for years, led support QA teams, built troubleshooting processes and worked very closely with dev teams. A lot of what I wanted to bring up doesn't apply so much to solo dev's, but I want to vouch for non-devs and anyone that might start working on team. Support brains and developer brains are actually not that different. I see on HN way too often that d…

Great presentation and insights on a profession that is kind of considered less important by a lot of people, thanks

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#86

Post by reaanb »

danso wrote: post #39
cyberferret wrote: post #11

I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, pr…

> I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). Somehow you managed to also keep the business going as its sole developer without going insane or bankrupt. If your luck turns bad and you have to find job security at a Big TechCo, at least the prospect of being stuck in an open-office-layout won't scare you :)

I did my own support as a solo dev for 15 years for an app used by around 250 companies and as much as 1000 users. Then we got bought out and I moved into an open plan office. It's not the same at all. 5 years later I still struggle to deal with the open plan noise and interruptions.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#87

Post by nicoburns »

kqr wrote: post #46
cyberferret wrote: post #11

I did it for 10 years, but more recently have moved away from phone support as much as possible (or delegated to others to do). The main reason - I am a solo developer. And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. It was basically impossible for me to get into 'flow' state during a normal working day. Even one phone call during the day took me away from my creative, pr…

> And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. This is something I can have trouble with even personally. I have noticed that when I get home from a long day of cold, analytical problem-solving, I mbrain bad at shifting my brain to empathetically listen and provide emotional support for my wifes problems.

I've found a short (20 minute) nap can help a lot with this.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#89

Post by dkersten »

koliber wrote: post #64
blt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote myself off as "bad at being supportive" for a long time. Eventually I realized that being supportive is a trainable skill just like software development or healthy eating. I am still not great at it, but getting better. I respectfully urge you to examine yourself and try to modify your habits rather than looking for excuses.

Agreed that it is trainable if you are bad at it in general. I don't think the parent was saying that he is bad at emotional support and being empathetic. He said he is having trouble switching from the developer brain mode into the empathetic human brain mode. This is something I noticed myself as well, especially when working from home. When I worked in an office, the commute home provided time to decompress and sw…

> I guess you could say that there are benefits to a commute after all!

Absolutely, its forced idle time where your mind can drift. Although, over time, I find myself just getting more and more tired during my commute to the point where anything I do think about is quickly lost now... :/

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#90

Post by sspiff »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
kqr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'. This is something I can have trouble with even personally. I have noticed that when I get home from a long day of cold, analytical problem-solving, I mbrain bad at shifting my brain to empathetically listen and provide emotional support for my wifes problems.

I've found a short (20 minute) nap can help a lot with this.

I've found that doing anything distracting can help.

Commuting, listening to a podcast or audio book, playing a video game for 15-20 minutes, ...

Whatever takes your mind away from matters at work.

Post reply on HN