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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

#131

Post by bluGill »

GrinningFool wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you are correct but realistically you will upgrade.

The difference is without subscription, I can be pretty sure the next major version will benefit me. With subscription,the only thing certain is that the seller wants to do as little as possible to keep taking my money. This tends to result on product updates that benefit them.

Except in the case of a natural monopoly (which doesn't apply to software) you can always switch to something else. Which means the seller needs to remain better than the alternatives.

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

#132

Post by ozim »

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…

None of these categories seem to build any meaningful rapport. Any honest answer I give is deeply unsatisfying to both parties, and we typically have better data from telemetry or crash logs than the emails provide. It’s certainly useful for us to receive them, but there’s not a helpful response I can give.

I don't know how you read the blog post but it seems your interpretation is uncharitable to say the least.

He wrote he already has good enough telemetry, there is just not much he can write in an e-mail to customer, besides generic "we know the issue thank you for the report" that would be useful for the customer and for themselves.

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

#133

Post by thomassmith65 »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #102

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 t…

Too late to edit my comment, but here is one example of going above and beyond for this business:

Uncommon Apps should create and maintain a pdf document with fair, useful information about competing podcast apps that do not use the subscription business model.

When someone complains to Uncommon Apps about the subscription model, if Uncommon Apps cannot change the person's mind (which will be the usual case), then Uncommon Apps can offer to forward a list of alternatives.

This would allow Castro support tickets to end with something useful. Uncommon Apps is losing this sale regardless, but at least there is some reputational gain.

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

#134

Post by appreciatorBus »

zzzeek wrote: post #120
faangguyindia wrote: post #110

>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…

This is all going to hinge in a tremendous way based on what kind of app you have and who your users are.

This is poster’s last show HN; homepage features some 16,000 user claim. App appears to be free, which I suspect will rather drastically change the composition of incoming support messages.

https://macrocodex.app/

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

#135

Post by thomassmith65 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #128
thomassmith65 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the nature of the interaction. If I contact a company to decide if I want to become their customer, I probably like them. If I contact a company about a post-sales problem or for technical support, it's a different story.

> post-sales Then that's not your first impression.

That's fair. I suppose "current impression" would have been a better choice of words.

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

#136

Post by appreciatorBus »

faangguyindia wrote: post #130
zzzeek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all going to hinge in a tremendous way based on what kind of app you have and who your users are.

people often link to our guide, for example on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1omfgx... Sometimes people link to our "guides", like this one https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/measure/bodyfat/ my app is in fitness field https://macrocodex.app/ and the people who use it are: 1. Bodybuilders 2. Overweight / obese / skinny fat / underweight individuals 3. General gym crowd Bodybuilders, w…

What you neglected to mention is that your app is free.

If this is something you’re able to do and people like it, I think that’s great.

However, the post is about a paid app and that’s going to have a significant influence on the type of support requests you get, and whether or not it makes financial sense to develop according to those requests.

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

#137

Post by narag »

I work partly supporting users. It's been very frustrating and this interesting post has helped me to put the finger on the reason.

It only works when you have a path to not only listen but also improve the situation. If 10% of calls or emails are related to X and you can solve X, then you can reduce 10% of calls or emails. Otherwise is just fixing problems manually but not going to the root cause.

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

#138

Post by psychoslave »

Chaosvex wrote: post #81
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.

Everybody on HN knows better than OP how to run their own business and could absolutely please 100% of customers or potential customers 100% of the time. Apparently. Idealism doesn't survive contact with reality.

I’m a bit doubtful with this conclusion, as apparently in many cases humans will rather refute reality is meaningful if it fails to pass their idealistic proof-test.

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

#139

Post by 1970-01-01 »

>The real positive experience comes when you actually improve the product

Yes, it turns out "fix the bugs" is a real world solution to "what should we be doing to make people like our app"

It's like they're traveling south to go north, and eventually get there by going around the pole.

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

#140

Post by bluGill »

abanana wrote: post #129
bluGill wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you are correct but realistically you will upgrade.

This is betraying a way of thinking that suggests what's normal now is the way it's always been. Given "there was a time that subscriptions for software were virtually unheard of", it's safe to assume we're talking about more than a couple of years ago. To talk as if most users always used to upgrade, suggests you might be young enough not to remember the software industry before a decade or two ago. In general, user…

I'm old enough to remember that time. People did up grade. Some of them rushed out to buy the latest version when it was released. Some of them waited until they got a new computer. Many of them tried to not upgrade until someone using the new version sent them a file and then they couldn't open it thus forcing an upgrade. A few only upgraded every other version.

I wasn't an automatic everybody upgraded on day one like subscriptions are, but it amounted to similar: regular upgrades over time.

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