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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

#161

Post by cyral »

dabluck wrote: post #74
jaffa2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why you are being ripped apart in the comments, especially for a lot of nitpicky things. It was an interesting article, I can resonate with it from years of doing customer support. Comment sections like this make you realize you should not be taking business advice from HN.

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

#162

Post by unsungNovelty »

michaelt wrote: post #42
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 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…

One off purchase and no updates?

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

#163

Post by angiolillo »

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 such price, because there is no way to sustainably develop a product without subscriptions

Such a price clearly exists -- in an extreme case you could charge 50x your annual subscription price and invest it with a 2% yield to get the equivalent of your subscription as interest. More realistically, if you are already considering taking on debt to grow your business it can make financial sense to offer lifetime licenses that are equivalent to several years' worth of subscription revenue to get an influx of up-front liquidity. Of course as your needs change so will your ratio of subscription-to-purchase price and this may result in a purchase price that is too high for your customers to consider, but the number always exists.

> Every one-time price is a gamble

True, but so are subscription prices! Either way, as the person who sets the prices, you are well-positioned to pick ones that are most likely to be successful.

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

#164

Post by feoren »

jbstack wrote: post #70
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.

> 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…

> there are plenty of software developers who offer lifetime purchases. In fact there was a time that subscriptions for software were virtually unheard of.

There's a big difference between software you buy, run on your computer, and don't expect to be constantly updated, vs. an online service that you expect to stay up and serve you new content forever. In the latter case, if a customer drops off after 24 months, that lowers your costs. You can't reasonably charge a user for the number of months they could potentially remain subscribed.

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

#165

Post by dabluck »

cyral wrote: post #161
dabluck wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why you are being ripped apart in the comments, especially for a lot of nitpicky things. It was an interesting article, I can resonate with it from years of doing customer support. Comment sections like this make you realize you should not be taking business advice from HN.

I asked Claude to check my post for spelling and typos, etc before posting, and it told me not to post it because people on hacker news are the same ones who email you about subscriptions, so it wouldn't be well received. Gotta hand it to the AI there!

I get the post was a little provocative, but I have posted a lot of content on the internet in the past and usually get like 1 comment if that, so I'd rather get feedback tbh and it seems like it resonated with a good number of people

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

#166

Post by mandeepj »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #134
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.

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/

> https://macrocodex.app/ I read it as macro codex, and thought it is an AI coding editor.

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

#167

Post by GrinningFool »

bluGill wrote: post #131
GrinningFool wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You underestimate inertia, and the fact that the industry has trained people that they must pay continually. On top of that, the common practice is to make it sufficiently hard to get your data out of your system and into the competition's - even when there's reasonably priced competition it does a great job at adding to inertia.

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

#168

Post by stavros »

mandeepj wrote: post #166
appreciatorBus wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> https://macrocodex.app/ I read it as macro codex, and thought it is an AI coding editor.

Well, it is "macro codex".

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

#169

Post by PunchyHamster »

> If I did, by catering more to persnickety power users, we run the risk of alienating newer users who don’t know how things work. But our power users probably aren’t going anywhere, at least they’re a little harder to shake, and alienating new users is the death of the product.

Well if you want to "build relationship" by ignoring people actually using your product seriously while calling them names behind their backs, there are plenty other podcast apps

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

#170

Post by eska »

ceejayoz wrote: post #154
appreciatorBus wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> App appears to be free, which I suspect will rather drastically change the composition of incoming support messages. Wouldn't assume this; I've seen how dickish people can be to open source maintainers.

He probably meant that free users are more dickish. That’s my experience
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