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Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

uncommonapps.nyc

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Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#61

Post by dabluck »

jwr wrote: post #54

Interesting how this can be different in a B2B setting. I run a B2B SaaS and consider personal support to be very important. While I do see some of what the OP described, the overall experience is mostly very positive. I enjoy talking to customers and from what I see, most customers appreciate honest responses, even if those responses explain why something can't be done right now or is much more complex than it seems…

> there is so much blind hate against subscriptions, with little (if any) consideration for a sustainable software business.

This is correct thanks for the comment. You will enjoy my next post which is about exactly this. (HN will not enjoy it)

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#62

Post by ricardobeat »

I am well aware customer support can be hell, and the most vocal customers are not necessarily the most relevant ones. What I’m reading here though, is:

- we don’t care about your pricing feedback. We’ve thought a lot and won’t change our minds

- we don’t care about your vaguely described bug unless it’s been reported multiple times (go use something else, I guess?)

- we don’t care about your easily reproducible bug either, unless it affects a significant % of users

- we don’t care about feature requests, we already know what’s best

This would be a standard approach for an enterprise product, but for a small independent app it’s not surprising it would fail to build rapport with their user base.

(note: I am not a user of this or any other podcast app)

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#63

Post by true_religion »

jwr wrote: post #55
michaelt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. And for some subscription situations, you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you. There's a 'PhotoSync' app that offers a premium option for either $1/month or $24 for life. Presumably because they looked at the ave…

> you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.

We like to think of physical products as one offs where what you buy tomorrow is the same as what you buy today.

But I have run a bakery for 5 years, and you get better day by day, you introduce new techniques, find different flours, optimize bake times for fluffiness, crispiness, and taste. The croissants we make today are much better than what we made during our first month.

We improved our product just like how software improves, but we did it without a croissant subscription, but by selling its own version as its own thing day by day.

What software companies need to do is sell versions, where the life time of the version usefulness is actually limited. In the physical world, we have wear and tear, or in the case of croissants, decomposition or consumption which limit customers from using the same product forever.

Can the same not be found for many software products?

To use iOS as an example, the OPs app Castro charges for night mode, but night mode via OS controls didn’t always exist in iOS so a theoretical Castro v1 could have been released without before it, and v2 would include that new feature. Or when inevitably, v1 no longer works on new iOS versions, people would have to upgrade.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#64

Post by pjc50 »

hello15565 wrote: post #26
keiferski wrote: post #24

When I was in college, I worked at a bakery and actually made some long-term friends by talking to customers that came into the store. I later used this job experience to get an email support job, answering questions that users had about our software plugin. Never made any long-term friends with customers there, even if they emailed us once a month. The difference is that email / online support has no “human downtime…

There's also the fact that, email / online support leave records. You really don't want to leave a written record of you asking someone about their life, as when/if it gets audited - you can possibly get into trouble.

I think this is an uncharitable reading of GDPR that is probably not backed by actual decisions?

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#65

Post by dabluck »

ricardobeat wrote: post #62

I am well aware customer support can be hell, and the most vocal customers are not necessarily the most relevant ones. What I’m reading here though, is: - we don’t care about your pricing feedback. We’ve thought a lot and won’t change our minds - we don’t care about your vaguely described bug unless it’s been reported multiple times (go use something else, I guess?) - we don’t care about your easily reproducible bug…

Pretty fair comment RE pricing feedback, I thought I was pretty clear I do care about your bugs quite a bit, but you're not necessarily going to have a good experience reporting it, and it's just not going to build rapport despite my best efforts. Though I guess I wasn't clear enough, tbh I just didn't expect so many people to read it

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#66

Post by card_zero »

brazzy wrote: post #57
zmgsabst wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I’m missing the irony.

The comment is basically doing exactly what it accused OP of doing: behaving as if the commenter has "singularly thought through every problem in an armchair" and knows better than OP who actually tried doing it.

Could be an armchair, could be a toilet, either seems a reasonable standard for a commenter on a messageboard, are we expecting a focus group or something?

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#67

Post by dabluck »

true_religion wrote: post #63
jwr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.

We like to think of physical products as one offs where what you buy tomorrow is the same as what you buy today. But I have run a bakery for 5 years, and you get better day by day, you introduce new techniques, find different flours, optimize bake times for fluffiness, crispiness, and taste. The croissants we make today are much better than what we made during our first month. We improved our product just like how so…

We don't charge for night mode. I don't really think versioning would work very well for us, many have tried, but I do agree Apple should facilitate other business models like this in a better way.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#68

Post by vladms »

jwr wrote: post #55
michaelt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. And for some subscription situations, you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you. There's a 'PhotoSync' app that offers a premium option for either $1/month or $24 for life. Presumably because they looked at the ave…

> you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.

Depends though what you pay for the one-time price. You can pay an offline version of the application (no extra costs afterwards), or a limited period of SaaS application updates (let's say 3 years).

I agree that paying a one time price and expecting continuos updates and new features is not reasonable.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#69

Post by bloak »

miki123211 wrote: post #37
speak_plainly wrote: post #13

Thinking about customer support as a ‘differentiator’ or a way to drive profit is depressing. You should simply strive to do what’s best for your customers. The sort of feedback you’re getting is golden and in the right hands can be put to use rather than be dismissed. Assuming that people who disagree with your pricing model just don’t understand how business works is really telling. You have to accept that your pri…

> you don't have the right error logging or telemetry built into the app itself. Which is exactly why HN's anti-telemetry stance is so unjustified.

Why exactly? "Error logging" is mentioned there as an alternative. I would have thought that if you can do telemetry you ought to be able to generate a local log file that is readable enough for the customer to feel confident about sending part of it back to you without breaking the law or their contracts with other parties.

Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped

#70

Post by jbstack »

jwr wrote: post #55
michaelt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to accept that your pricing model sucks to a group of people (who are likely experiencing subscription fatigue) and decide if it’s worth losing or never getting their money. And for some subscription situations, you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you. There's a 'PhotoSync' app that offers a premium option for either $1/month or $24 for life. Presumably because they looked at the ave…

> you can probably offer them a price that works for both of you There is no such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions. You can't go to a local bakery and pay $24 for life to get fresh rolls every day. Every one-time price is a gamble, where somebody is betting on something. It's a way to close your eyes and pretend ongoing costs do not exist.

> there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions

This is clearly incorrect given that there are plenty of software developers who offer lifetime purchases. In fact there was a time that subscriptions for software were virtually unheard of.

On a lower level, all that matters is the numbers. If your average customer stays subscribed for 24 months, then charging a lifetime fee equal to 24 months is equivalent to a subscription model. At that point it's irrelevant what's "sustainable" since 24 months is the max you can expect to charge on average anyway.

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