Asks for feedback, gets feedback, complains.
It started with agreeable cases, then ended up on a holier than thou attitude.
Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
141–150 of 205 posts
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#142Earlier 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.
I remember an article in Byte magazine circa 1982 or so which talked about how the software business sucks because it goes like
(1) Raise capital and spend a year developing a product
(2) Release the product, make a certain amount of money, then revenue dries up
(3) Pay yourself a bit and feed the rest of the money into develop version 2.0
(4) A year later it is struggle to sell version 2.0 because you're not just competing with applications from other people you are competing with your old 1.0, your most satisfied customers might be the least likely to upgrade
And that assumes development for 2.0 goes according to plan! As a software developer who gets a paycheck my life is easier working on a subscription based project my life is easier because management is not facing a financial crisis because a project is running a few months late.
As a customer though I often like paying ahead and I've been through a few cycles like this with Plex. Like I see the lifetime offering from Plex and I have the money now and it looks like a good deal... Then two years later they come up with something that really alienates me (that FAST service) and I hate being pushed into something I want nothing to deal with. So I go to Jellyfin and it is a godawful mess that I never get working quite right, just watching a movie with family and friends becomes an exercise in humiliation.
And I'm thinking... I don't have the option of exit [1] because I can't cancel my Plex pass! If on the other hand I was paying for a monthly subscription they are motivated to care what I think [2]
Now funny I had this summer when I was trying to gentle a stray cat [3] in a room in the other house and wound up watching a lot of Tubi, came to the conclusion FAST wasn't so bad, switched back to Plex, got a monthly subscription, and I am highly satisfied.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty_Model
[2] I hate to be this way but when I have trouble w/ amazon I write to jeff@amazon.com and point out that it makes no sense to screw me for $20 because I have a say in at least $2M NPV of AWS cloud spending, when you consider a Prime subscription and how much an ordinary person could buy from AMZN in a lifetime, AMZN has a tremendous amount to lose from "exit"
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#143Thinking 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 could easily spin up a forum where power users help each other
tell me you've never run anything without telling me you've never run anything...
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#144Interesting 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…
I also run a B2B SaaS and I could have written this word for word.
The only exception is that I do get a decent amount of word of mouth because many of my customers are individual franchisees in national networks, so they tell their peers who they don’t compete with about me. But that’s not really so much about customer support as the product itself.
The main value I get from doing customer support myself is the same that I get from doing sales myself: learning. I have my pulse directly on what my customers need, like, and dislike about the product.
Secondarily, I do think it helps with both close rate and retention to be able to talk to the business owner, but this might be less true in other niches.
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#145Thinking 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 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.
I think the article was very clear that they had already accepted that, and had already decided it was worth never getting their money.
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#146Earlier 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.
I remember an article in Byte magazine circa 1982 or so which talked about how the software business sucks because it goes like (1) Raise capital and spend a year developing a product (2) Release the product, make a certain amount of money, then revenue dries up (3) Pay yourself a bit and feed the rest of the money into develop version 2.0 (4) A year later it is struggle to sell version 2.0 because you're not just co…
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Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#147Thinking 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 could easily spin up a forum where power users help each other tell me you've never run anything without telling me you've never run anything...
After a long day answering emails, I love kicking back and moderating my support forum.
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#148The 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 Un…
You may or may not be surprised to find out I have actually done this, and it did not in fact make the user happier but in fact enraged them that instead of doing what they wanted me to do I had pointed them to a competitor.
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's fair, thanks for the response. I'd like to respectfully disagree with it being clear what the learnings are. Your conclusion says: > In other words, the best approach for us is what most companies do. The failure here, based on the article, is you had an idea about customer support, and you bought a company to test it. Personally, before getting that far I would expect someone to do some googling or research o…
> The failure here, based on the article, is you had an idea about customer support, and you bought a company to test it.
That's not at all what happened, nor did I say that anywhere. I didn't buy a company in order to test a theory. This is just describing one of the things I did after buying it.
Re: Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
#150I heard from someone before. charge more - the most vocal customers are the most demanding ones.
Also I wonder people tried charging for escalation (that's what enterprise plan is for I suppose)