321–330 of 441 posts
I love the ending of this story, which isn't obvious from just looking at the title. The author identified key pain points around customer support, automated them, and went back to enjoying life. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about the possibilities of technology and AI as a force multiplier, especially when working on side projects, "lifestyle" businesses, or even startups as a single founder.
No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.
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I wonder how flows like that happen. Is Support just completely disconnected from Engineering? Do they not have a way to report issues and indicate that many customers are having a specific issue? Does the company believe that giving a customer a runaround will make them less upset than saying "Sorry, this is a known issue. We're working on it but do not have a timeline"? Certainly at some point, some support person…
Yes. Engineering time is expensive. Support exists to resolve problems without needing engineer time except when the company thinks that the problem is worthy of being addressed. The tendency to wall off engineers is often taken to a counterproductive level.
But there's a line SOMEWHERE. The few tickets that DO need engineering time REALLY NEED IT, and it's completely asinine that in some corporations, it's impossible.
If, for example, 100 people are talking to support for the exact same crash, and people in support are able to reproduce it, it needs to go to Engineering, rather than support telling customers "Have you tried formatting your drive and reinstalling everything from scratch?" when they already know it won't fix anything.
This was a fascinating read, really. The potential customer base being basically suckers waving wads of cash to be taken from them. The wild contrast of how nice the author tries to be to every single person that interacts with the project -- despite majority being the equivalent of single-celled organisms poking the fb markeplace "is it available" button. Reading some of the messages from potential users is so eye-o…
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…
Companies only pay attention to you as a customer when they think the checkbook is coming out, or going away. Big companies have different reasons, but the behavior is similar. The people who understand this start making everything sound like a quid pro quo situation even if it's not very sensible.
The more clever and slightly pessimistic entrepreneur might go so far as suggest the problematic customer talk to one of their competitors. But that sort of biological warfare really should be covered by the Geneva Convention.
I started another product in a different niche which also showed some success and eventually overtook it and allowed me to quit my 9-5. I shuttered the original product as it wasn't worth the hassle. The quality of the customer in the new niche is so much higher and therefore the mental drain is a lot lower.
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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…
Would you care for a counterpoint? This comment should be three paragraphs. As written, it’s very hard to read and I get lost. If this was a professional communication and you had asked three questions, I might understand one or might not. Now I have no issues saying “dude, your writing is very hard to follow.” But what if your colleagues are nicer than I am? Or just spitballing. You’ve admitted that you’re the kind…
We were all close and could discuss “meta” from time to time, in a friendly constructive manner. You’re probably reading more into this aspect than there is.
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Me: This very specific thing is broken in general for your product when I do a and b. Just like users x,y and z report on . (Siemens) Support: Before I can help you, please find the serial number via , and the exact version of subsystems . Me: Here you go, though I fail to see how my specific setup is relevant as the problem has been reported on forums for years, and it is easily reproducible Support: Please update t…
I wonder how flows like that happen. Is Support just completely disconnected from Engineering? Do they not have a way to report issues and indicate that many customers are having a specific issue? Does the company believe that giving a customer a runaround will make them less upset than saying "Sorry, this is a known issue. We're working on it but do not have a timeline"? Certainly at some point, some support person…
The amount of times the software doesn't work because the HASP key [1] is plugged into a different machine is so many.
You just can't trust that they've done any basic troubleshooting and so have to start from a completely blank slate.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_protection_dongle
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Okay, different person as the one you responded to. Your entire comment was reasonable up until the last line. What is that even based on? Where did they admit to setting up traps? Is that your take on their comment about trying to ask three questions in one message? Because, even without them creating paragraphs, it is abundantly clear they just mean that as something from experience. Not something they do as someth…
This is a good example. They wrote: “When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain.” Confronted is a big word with a hostile intent. They’re incredibly measured in their language and use precise language. That sounds like a trap to me - it’s: A.) Asking three questions and only get 1/3 answered. B.) Waiting for a suitable period of time to elapse. C.) Confronting them while e…
You haven't built a side project, you've built yourself a job. This is why I've always been scared to make any commitments to paid subs other than "I'll send you all my blogs early"
And this is why I would make to sure to log all the time that I spend on that side job, so that I can make some estimate about what my hourly rate would be with the earnings I make. This might then allow a better decision on whether it is a worthwhile endeavor or not.
A couple of thoughts: As a customer, if I see firm boundaries set, (IE, read XXX before contacting me,) I usually assume that someone is under stress from nonsense like this. Then I try to be on my extra-best behavior. I know a lot of people suggested raising your price. Some alternatives are to: 1: Offer two price points: The $20 / month gets no support, the $100 / month is supported. 2: Consider some of the feature…
>Offer two price points: The $20 / month gets no support, the $100 / month is supported. Someone is paying you money and you won't help them? They are going to cancel and possibly badmouth you on social media. Also, how are you supposed to improve your product if you don't interact with most of the userbase? I try to help everyone who uses my software. Even if they are evaluating and haven't paid me a penny. Commerci…
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We know the answer to this even before modern tech businesses existed: running a business is a very different experience from what people expect. This is exacerbated with certain experiences that create worldviews which are closer to the opposite of running a business. This is why startup people straight out of school are often unencumbered with ideas that impact their mission. If you go into a large organization, yo…
The paycheck mentality. It depresses economic output and productivity across the board by keeping people unengaged and dependent.