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I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

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Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#161

Post by ecnahc515 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #144
Vegenoid wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. All the time when I worked in IT: Me: Please try these 3 things and let me know how it goes: (list of 3 things with instructions) Them: I tried (thing #1) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try these 2 things and let me know how it goes Them: I tried (thing #2) and it didn’t work. Me: Thank you, please try this thing and let me know how it goes Them: (no response) Me: Just checking in to see if this is re…

And sometimes the last one becomes: Them: Don’t close the ticket, I hadn't had a chance to check that yet. Life gets in between and this one library or project is usually hardly the only thing that person juggles. We need to accept, that sometimes issues remain open for an extended duration. The worst is, when you have the same error or issue someone else had already, but their issue got closed by an effin github bot…

I almost never see bots close issues that are less than 30 days old. Many projects can change a lot in 30-90 days and the bug may no longer exist, keeping issues open when they may no longer be relevant isn't helping anyone either. If it is still relevant, it can simply be re-opened. I don't see any downside to semi-aggressively closing stale issues. If it's easily reproduced then most good projects will mark it so that it won't be auto-closed.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#162

Post by generic92034 »

wruza wrote: post #116
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

In written communication it often works for me to create an explicit numbered list with indentations and plenty of white space between the items. It also makes it easier to refer to the items in the following communication.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#163

Post by conductr »

authorfly wrote: post #90
pc86 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done exactly one legit "SaaS startup" type venture around 2012-2015. I still think about the absolutely insane customer service requests we'd get. It was a very niched down Eventbrite competitor, so we did things like PDF ticket generation, QR code generation, attendance tracking, there was a big fundraising component as well so lots of payment infrastructure. We charged a percentage of ticket sales so any one e…

Yup yup yup. Big reason for avoiding free users is avoiding those requests. This is the kind of thing no startup puts in their year one budget and (alongside supplier cashflow issues) is why those projections don't work for

Idk. It’s totally ok to just ignore those types of requests. Even a lot of the requests the author was getting. They’re just fishing and there’s Practically zero chance they’ll even ever follow up to see why you never responded.

Mega corporations get away with awful support of paying customers, people don’t actually expect you to jump at their command as a startup or even as a toy side project. If you’re able to ignore a beggar on the street, you should be able to ignore a lot of these emails. Stop guilting yourself into a heavy administrative burden and don’t avoid consumer apps because of that fear.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#164

Post by duxup »

wruza wrote: post #116
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

I really wish there was a reliable way to ask people.

"I need your engagement level to be set to 10 for this communication. It's ok if you can't do that, but then just say you can't do that. I'm already set to 10 and rando guesswork / tidbits are only going to cause problems."

Even just "nope can't do it" responses would save me time.

I just got off a critical call with folks pulling stuff out of their ... and it was a nightmare / complete waste of my time.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#165

Post by detourdog »

Eisenstein wrote: post #122
datavirtue wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paycheck mentality. It depresses economic output and productivity across the board by keeping people unengaged and dependent.

I don't think that 'everyone an entrepreneur' would increase economic output and productivity, and the fact is that some people just want a paycheck because they don't really care about making more money than the paycheck gives them, and the work is fine.

In old world Egypt they kept the creative class in a seperate village. I believe this was needed to keep group harmony and focus.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#166

Post by spacephysics »

7bit wrote: post #150
siliconc0w wrote: post #140

One suggestion is simply increase the price. Price is strongly correlated with quality of customer. Price also acts as signaling that this is a tool for professionals who make actual money and so shouldn't be bothered coughing up something trivial like $100 for a subscription. You end up making more with far less customer support.

I find it hard to believe that this is true. For 100$ a month I expect a far more polished product than for 20$, where I can look over a lot of missing features. If features don't work as advertised, I will absolutely make no distinction between a 500$ or 1$ product, and will demand a fix. But I will more likely have more patient if the service is cheap, before migrating away. And then, if your customers are business…

We’ve also seen customer support inquiries, and in general quality of our customers, rise with an increase in price.

It doesn’t make sense as an end consumer, but B2B lens it makes sense.

If a business can afford the higher price tag, they most likely would rather have a hands off approach for the problem they’re trying to solve (in a service based business)

Many of our mid and lower tier customers want everything drawn out and explained, and give feedback at every step. Our higher tier customers pay faster, request minimal input (outside of times we ask for it), and generally much easier to work with

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#168

Post by Aachen »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #41
_se wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.

Doesn't need to be AI, most customer support was already automated before ChatGPT rose to prominence. Hell, I developed a mobile website once for a power company that was basically a wizard / checklist of "Have you checked for known outages? Have you checked your breakers? Have you checked if your neighbours have issues too?" before they were shown the customer service number. Human contact doesn't scale, or is prohi…

24 people on 2.5 million users and you say it doesn't scale?

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#169

Post by mezzie2 »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #151
ipsento606 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make your support timelines clear somewhere in your product, eg: Our support will respond within max 48 hours, but most responses take 2-3 hours. This is the biggest thing I struggle with. I have a couple of semi-successful side projects. They bring in some money, but not enough to hire someone to help with support. I have never been at a place in my life where something like "I will response to all support request…

Sometimes it's valuable to receive a (clearly non-automated) support response indicating that the message was received and a proper response is in the works, just to confirm that the support channel is actually still functional. Even just confirmation that the website form isn't a black hole and that support tickets aren't now exclusively accepted through Twitter, Instagram, or a secret discord server can be very rea…

A large part of my job is end user support in a corporate environment. I always do this - even if I know an issue is going to take a while due to me having to reach out to other departments/a vendor, wait for an answer, and potentially go back and forth, I always reach out to let people know I got the email, that I'm working on it, and that I'll reach back out when I know more. If possible, I also suggest workarounds/alternatives for them to use/do in the time while I'm working on the problem.
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