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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

#181

Post by skeeter2020 »

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…

>> receive 2–5 support tickets per week. I read every one of them.

I don't think reading 5 tickets a week is the flex you think it is. Now if you responded with lettermail to every one, that would be impressive.

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

#182

Post by drdec »

zmgsabst wrote: post #108
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.

$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…

> the safe drawdown rate of 4% per year

IIRC this rate is based on some standard retirement length (like 30 years), not forever.

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

#183

Post by keerthiko »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #181
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…

>> receive 2–5 support tickets per week. I read every one of them. I don't think reading 5 tickets a week is the flex you think it is. Now if you responded with lettermail to every one, that would be impressive.

i'd say it is a valid flex if from 16k users, their total volume of support tickets is so low that they can read and respond to them before they're done with their morning coffee -- a flex about how solid and well-targeted their service is that it doesn't draw more support requests!

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

#184

Post by arsoon »

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…

Having worked in product/technical support on and off for almost two decades, I also have noticed some interesting parallels in support interactions with customers from certain countries.

Not all of them were negative, they were just different. Some countries lead with praise and then tangentially ask for a discount. Some countries contact for a legitimate issue/bug which is resolved, and then expect some kind of remuneration for the inconvenience (even if they caused it!), and finally some were almost verbosely thankful and appreciative, re-opening tickets every single time to thank someone vs. just letting the conversation end.

It has really made me rethink customer/client interactions when I have them in person, and also how other countries view my own.

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

#185

Post by elevation »

tlogan wrote: post #179

The key point of the article is this: > In other words, the best approach for us is what most companies do. Every inexperienced entrepreneur starts with a promise that their support will not be terrible like Google, Comcast, or other big companies. And that will be their path to success. But in the end, you learn that you need to offer the same level of support that other companies in your market offer. And if your s…

I think this is spot-on for the business of shipping podcast players.

But big-company-style support is only inevitable if your company must scale. Many markets can sustain players with higher margins and a premium product+support.

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

#186

Post by tlogan »

elevation wrote: post #185
tlogan wrote: post #179

The key point of the article is this: > In other words, the best approach for us is what most companies do. Every inexperienced entrepreneur starts with a promise that their support will not be terrible like Google, Comcast, or other big companies. And that will be their path to success. But in the end, you learn that you need to offer the same level of support that other companies in your market offer. And if your s…

I think this is spot-on for the business of shipping podcast players. But big-company-style support is only inevitable if your company must scale. Many markets can sustain players with higher margins and a premium product+support.

I disagree. But that is that what I learned.

Sadly, it is hard to convince people of this unfortunate and depressing fact: customer support is nice, but in the grand scheme of things, it usually does not matter that much.

Everybody has to learn that lesson on their own.

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

#187

Post by stavros »

bluGill wrote: post #109
jbstack wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope, we used to just stay on the version we bought on plenty of software, because it worked fine for our needs.

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

#188

Post by stavros »

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.

Not only that, they will actively make the product worse for you because someone will give them more money than you to do it.

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

#189

Post by michaelt »

jwr wrote: post #155
michaelt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such price If it’s sustainable at $1/month, and a customer is willing to prepay $1200 for a 100 year subscription, that sounds sustainable to me.

But that's a gamble! That's exactly my point. Someone is betting on something. How long the customer will stay, how long the software will be maintained and available, etc.

Everything in business is a gamble.

Maybe tomorrow my competitor will aggressively cut prices. Maybe the product line I've spent money developing won't sell well. Maybe that new machine I've invested in won't be as productive as the marketing materials promised. Maybe bad weather will mean my customers stay home instead of visiting my shop. Maybe a war on the other side of the planet will raise my material costs and empty my customers' wallets. Maybe the artist headlining my music festival won't be allowed to enter the country. Maybe 10 years into its 50 year life my nuclear power plant will be undercut by falling costs for solar. Maybe Google will make the thing my app does a native feature of their OS. Maybe we pushed the envelope too far or didn't test thoroughly enough and we'll be buried in warranty claims.

This risk is why investments in businesses pay more than treasury bonds.

If you aren't comfortable with that, entrepreneurship might not be right for you - nothing wrong with being an employee and getting the certainty of a monthly salary.

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

#190

Post by GrinningFool »

Analemma_ wrote: post #172
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.

This kind of shoddy, surface-level "incentives alignment" analysis can just as easily be used to prove the opposite: with the "pay once, then pay for upgrades" model, sellers are incentivized to never actually fix all the bugs so that you are always forced to buy the next version.

Have you not seen what's happened in this industry over the last decades and the way it's actually playing out?
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