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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

#101

Post by 1dom »

> I had an idea when I bought Castro that human support based around actual user experience was an easy differentiator. I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use. I thought if I used my own product every day, read every email and answered it thoughtfully, people would appreciate this, and it would build some degree of loyalty and appreciation.

This is the opening paragraph. I think a lot of the disagreement or criticism here in HN is from people who recognise the author went into this assuming they know better than basically anyone who's ever done anything in customer service before.

They don't say it, but the author seem to start with the assumption that nobody knows or cares about customer support so they do a rubbish job, and all the author needs to do is go in and try and be a decent human and they'll fix customer support.

And the result was what anyone who's ever done any customer support for even half a day would know: it's not that easy, it's generally infuriatingly hard and demoralising to keep all customers happy, and 10% will take 90% of the time/effort until it drains you. This is customer support 101.

I hope this has waved in the author's face the value of having decent conversations with people they trust in the domain first, as they could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort here. I think the article would benefit and get less flack from acknowledging this is the authors learnings, not some new insight into customers.

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

#102

Post by thomassmith65 »

The author hired someone with technical knowledge, but that's not enough.

Technical knowledge and people skills are different things.

If someone has taken the effort to contact you, they likely already have a bad first impression of you. If your response is focused on "educating the customer" or is too conscious of what's fair for the business itself, it will probably not impress.

Great customer support is the kind that might result in a customer sharing their interaction with friends or social media. The support the author mentions in this post isn't likely to do that.

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

#103

Post by hiyfsch »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #95
dabluck wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All comments here yeah. Almost to 11K views and there were less than 50 before I posted, with a dozen new subscribers to the blog.

I mention the value of negative feedback, here (in my own blog): https://littlegreenviper.com/the-road-most-traveled-by/#feed... I don’t really care whether or not I get many views (spoiler: I don’t -too many words) . I write for myself.

[dead]

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

#104

Post by tossandthrow »

Sometimes I write angrily to companies. Usually not on the first email (though it can be incredibly formal).

The cases I can remember is bike rental company that didn't want to provide a receipt, airline that didn't want to accept a complaint (by making impossible to understand complaint flows), company that didn't stop stop marketing email after several reports.

So many companies are treating their customers incredibly badly.

This becomes a tax on the companies that does not treat their customers badly.

Bad customer behavior is a cost of doing business - and I honestly understand why customers are coming out hard.

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

#105

Post by OPBoot »

dabluck wrote: post #76
OPBoot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

I think

> I thought ... people would appreciate this,

gets translated into "I'm only doing this so that people will star/upvote/'like and subscribe' "

"likes" -> the universal currency of internet fame

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

#106

Post by dabluck »

1dom wrote: post #101

> I had an idea when I bought Castro that human support based around actual user experience was an easy differentiator. I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use. I thought if I used my own product every day, read every email and answered it thoughtfully, people would appreciate this, and it would build some degree of loyalty and appreciation. This is the opening paragraph. I think a lot of t…

People keep talking about how much flack I got but I don't think I've ever written anything that has resonated more with people. I'm not mad I got feedback guys I can take it. As for your comment, the title of the piece includes "what I got wrong" so I think it's pretty clear where the learnings were.

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

#107

Post by eviks »

> We have never heard this before. User can provide details for us, but if others aren’t experiencing it, it’s unlikely to be prioritized. Still, useful signal for us.

That's a common mistake. Since the support is of the level you've experienced yourself

> I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use.

You should realize that many people don't contact support with their issues, so the fact that you haven't heard about it before doesn't mean much

> putting too much time into support isn’t a differentiator

> It’s unlikely I’m going to implement the request. If I did, by catering more to persnickety power users

Sure, why would a user care about how much time you put into declining to improve the app for them? How is that a differentiator, almost every single app doesn't cater much to power users

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

#108

Post by zmgsabst »

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.

$1/day forever is around $9125 using the safe drawdown rate of 4% per year.

So if you’re a bakery and a customer offers $9000+ for a fresh roll every day forever, you should almost certainly take them up on that offer. A smart baker could probably get that number sub-$5000, but you’ll always come out okay around 25x the yearly cost (in this case, $365).

Similarly, if the amortized yearly cost of a customer is $12 (ie, $1 per month), then a $300 forever price is financially indistinguishable from a permanent subscription. (Actually, better: time value of money, they can’t cancel the annuity you buy, etc.)

So there always is a price where that is financially viable.

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

#109

Post by bluGill »

jbstack wrote: post #94
bluGill wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software was always a subscription you bought version two then version three... It wasn't obviously or explicitly a subscription but it still was one.

That isn't the same thing at all. If I buy version 2 then it's mine and I can continue to use it for as long as I want, if I'm happy with the feature set. I can ignore version 3 or choose to buy it. If I buy it then I now own two products instead of one. Sometimes the older version might even be better (e.g. features I like have been removed or made worse). With a subscription model I'm forced to pay again and again…

In theory you are correct but realistically you will upgrade.

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

#110

Post by faangguyindia »

>I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use. I thought if I used my own product every day, read every email and answered it thoughtfully, people would appreciate this, and it would build some degree of loyalty and appreciation.

I run an app with 16,000 users and receive 2–5 support tickets per week. I read every one of them.

Around 20% of my app has been built based on user suggestions.

People are generally kind and promote my app across multiple platforms for free. I don't have any budget for marketing.

Users don't always show their appreciation with words. Instead, they show it by eagerly helping resolve issues providing clear steps to reproduce bugs, sending screenshots or videos, and responding quickly to follow up questions. I also regularly come across people recommending my app on Reddit or in YouTube comment sections, which often surprises me. :)

If you're supporting your users well, they're probably giving back in their own way too. :)

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