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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

#71

Post by jbstack »

vladms wrote: post #68
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.

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.

For the majority of software I use, I don't really care about continuous upgrades and new features, as long as it works with the feature set I signed up for.

A great example for me is the Xodo app on Android. It's by far the best PDF editor that I've found on Android, particularly for annotating with a digital pen. Some features are locked. If I want to unlock them, it's $5 a month. I get nothing out of that which isn't already in the app. I'm happy to pay a one-off fee for the work the developers have done up to that point. I'm definitely not happy to add another $5 a month to my pile of subscriptions.

For me the boundary is this: (1) If I get something of value every month (e.g. use of a cloud server, or something which obviously needs regular updating like Netflix) -> subscription justified; (2) If I just want to use what I can already see in the app -> very unlikely I'll ever subscribe unless the product is absolutely essential to me and there are no competitors.

A good example of the latter is Skritter. I don't care about new functionality, but there literally isn't another app which can do what it does, so I pay the subscription.

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

#72

Post by OPBoot »

ikawe wrote: post #15

I know this isn’t a very interesting comment, but just to provide some balance to the mostly negative comments I’m seeing: It’s interesting that you did the experiment, and I appreciate you sharing your results. It all seems reasonable, even if a bit depressing.

A lot of people in the comments are saying he did it for "likes" - that's a pretty harsh reading of the article.

What I think a lot of people are missing is that the difference between supporting corporates who spend up to millions per year on your product and supporting end-users who are literlly counting every cent they spend is a huge gulf in terms of expectations, technical ability, professionalism.... the list goes on. It's a completely different game.

I thought the article was a brilliant summary of why you simply can't help all the users all the time. It's a hard lesson to learn in the world of Tech Support. We all want to be the knight is shining armour solving customer problems, but the skill to be able to say "no" in the right way is not universal.

To those ragging on the author - there are huge numbers of people who, even if you paid them to use your software, they would still complain and swear at you. It's just life. And dealing with the competing interests of customers, time pressures, personal sanity and many more is almost exactly the job description of Tech Support.

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

#73

Post by jaffa2 »

dabluck wrote: post #40
stevoski wrote: post #39

To the writer of the article: you missed a big opportunity with this article by not having an obvious link straight to your product, Castro, and by not telling us in a few words what it does. It’s not too late to change the first sentence to: > I had an idea when I bought [Castro](whatever_the_url_is), a XXX app, that human support…

Yes thanks added. Next article: "What I got wrong: Marketing 101"

i still don't know what castro is, and I'm not interested to look it up. something to do with podcasts, is all I've gleaned from the comments.

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

#74

Post by dabluck »

jaffa2 wrote: post #73
dabluck wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes thanks added. Next article: "What I got wrong: Marketing 101"

i still don't know what castro is, and I'm not interested to look it up. something to do with podcasts, is all I've gleaned from the comments.

I didn't really write this to promote the product and it's not important to understand the content but it's now linked in the first sentence. But since you don't care I think we are good.

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

#75

Post by usernametaken29 »

I personally know some businesses in which the key differentiator is excellent human customer support. But then again, we’re talking 5 digit software licenses where that matters a lot more then for simple SaaS subscriptions

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

#76

Post by dabluck »

OPBoot wrote: post #72
ikawe wrote: post #15

I know this isn’t a very interesting comment, but just to provide some balance to the mostly negative comments I’m seeing: It’s interesting that you did the experiment, and I appreciate you sharing your results. It all seems reasonable, even if a bit depressing.

A lot of people in the comments are saying he did it for "likes" - that's a pretty harsh reading of the article. What I think a lot of people are missing is that the difference between supporting corporates who spend up to millions per year on your product and supporting end-users who are literlly counting every cent they spend is a huge gulf in terms of expectations, technical ability, professionalism.... the list g…

Thanks. I'm not really understanding the likes comment. What are likes in this context? I was very explicit in the post I thought providing better support would build customer relationships and improve retention, and I learned that really isn't true. Also I wrote this a couple days ago so the blog would have content and only submitted on a whim, had I known I'd get 10K views and 100 comments I would've written it more carefully

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

#77

Post by jbstack »

dabluck wrote: post #4
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #2

I started off reading this article thinking "well, anyone who has ever maintained an open source project has almost certainly experienced the unending entitlement of users even when working for free". But after reading the article, I'm not surprised your users dislike you more after communicating with them... > I have already thought about this a great deal. I am not changing anything based on your email. > User can…

Thanks for reading. I'm not sure what you think is scummy unless it's just having a subscription? If so, you are going to love my next article on how subscription apps are the best invention ever and the only business model that makes sense! Definitely subscribe so you don't miss that one.

The thing you have to remember is that there are thousands of products out there all trying to charge a subscription, and most people aren't going to justify taking on more than a very small handful of them at any time. Plus (not directed at you specifically, just in general), your product almost certainly isn't as good or as important to the customer as you think it is unless you've genuinely identified some niche nobody else is operating in, of you have an exceptionally polished product with few competitors.

People are however consistently willing to regularly make one-off purchases to get something they can "own". I've bought way more lifetime licenses for software than I've taken out subscriptions. When you consider that nobody stays subscribed for life, there's always a number that you can charge for lifetime which is in fact functionally equivalent to a subscription anyway.

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

#78

Post by Hendrikto »

Aurornis wrote: post #44

> 99% of the time, no matter how carefully or kindly it’s explained, the reply will be more negative than the initial email. When I was in a product leadership position I liked to spend time doing some of the customer support work. This is a common experience. Customers who write angry emails do not care about your reasons. They want something from you (cheaper rates, a specific feature they need, a discount, a freeb…

> “I’d like to speak to your manager” customer who thinks that if there’s a 10% chance of getting what they want by being a jerk then it’s worth pushing as hard as they can.

Throw those people out immediately. Not only are they bad customers themselves, they also drive away the good ones.

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

#79

Post by kd5bjo »

pjc50 wrote: post #64
hello15565 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Who said anything about GDPR? If someone reveals to you that they are in some kind of protected class, then there’s a risk that anything you do they don’t like could see you tagged for discrimination even if it’s how you’d treat any customer in the same situation.

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

#80

Post by dabluck »

jbstack wrote: post #77
dabluck wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading. I'm not sure what you think is scummy unless it's just having a subscription? If so, you are going to love my next article on how subscription apps are the best invention ever and the only business model that makes sense! Definitely subscribe so you don't miss that one.

The thing you have to remember is that there are thousands of products out there all trying to charge a subscription, and most people aren't going to justify taking on more than a very small handful of them at any time. Plus (not directed at you specifically, just in general), your product almost certainly isn't as good or as important to the customer as you think it is unless you've genuinely identified some niche n…

People on hacker news really love to argue about subscriptions! Many of them even email me the same things. Great fodder for discourse.
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