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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

#191

Post by hasudon7171 »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #5

One suggestion — when you have an unsatisfying answer for a customer like “I can’t reproduce that”, or “I won’t build that feature”, the customer may not appreciate the amount of effort you have invested in that decision. A 30 minute phone call/video call may communicate more effectively the depth of care you have. Even if you convey the same information, people _love_ talking to the owner/founder, it is a very stron…

Making a phone call might be effective at times. However, I don’t think simply making a call will solve the problem. Once a customer makes a phone call, they’ll feel compelled to call every time. That will be burden on the support staff. Even with email, simply striving to provide prompt and reliable responses shows that you’re putting the customer first.

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

#192

Post by jbstack »

egorfine wrote: post #88
jbstack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the majority of software I use, I don't really care about continuous upgrades and new features, as long as it works with the feature set I signed up for. A great example for me is the Xodo app on Android. It's by far the best PDF editor that I've found on Android, particularly for annotating with a digital pen. Some features are locked. If I want to unlock them, it's $5 a month. I get nothing out of that which is…

> as long as it works with the feature set I signed up for. Yes. On the exact major OS version you signed up on.

That's fine. It's my choice whether to upgrade my OS or not. If I do so, and my app no longer works on the new OS, then I can purchase a new version. Why should I pay a monthly fee just in case I might upgrade my OS and just in case the app doesn't work there?

Also, it's far less likely than you're suggesting that I would need the exact major OS version I started with. The majority of apps survive an OS upgrade just fine. In my case, I use NixOS, so that isn't even an issue at all since every package can have all of its dependencies frozen for as long as you like, even with a new major OS version.

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

#193

Post by 1dom »

dabluck wrote: post #149
1dom wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the article:

> I had an idea when I bought Castro that human support based around actual user experience was an easy differentiator.

Sorry for taking that a bit too literally.

The other points still stand.

You have interesting experiences. There's a common theme in my feedback, and in the other comments that provide constructive feedback: you're missing accepted learnings by being a stubborn/arrogant/maybe just inexperienced entrepreneur. e.g.:

> Ultimately, for us, putting too much time into support isn’t a differentiator, and it’s often counter-productive.

Your language here, and in the rest of the conclusion, frames the learning as "the problem was that my idea [that maybe customer support would be good if people just tried] just didn't work for specifically for us because x, y, z is different for us".

It didn't work for you because it's a fundamentally flawed assumption that CS was easy if you just try to be good at it and care about the customer. You wrote that as the idea you had when you bought the company. The idea didn't fail because of your special circumstances, the idea failed because it's a demonstrably bad idea, sorry.

Many other commenters have made the same critical point as me, but your first response to me was essentially: "what critical points? I can take it. And besides, I said 'what I got wrong' so you're wrong to say I got the wrong learnings". Which is - again - you dismissing people's experience (of you).

In the meantime, I noticed your site is down. I'll keep a look out for your writings in future. I mean it genuinely that you have interesting experiences. I think you need humbling a little though. Sorry again for the harsh feedback. I sincerely think your world and everyone else's world would be better and brighter if you really reread and absorb the constructive feedback from me and other HN commenters with an open mind, rather than looking for ways to dismiss it.

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

#194

Post by simiones »

skinfaxi wrote: post #99
simiones wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest tension between software and one-off purchases is related to bugfixing, and especially security. It makes sense that you don't expect new features for a product that you paid for once. But, what is the case with bugs? If the product mostly does what it promised to do, but sometimes crashes, do you expect those crashes to be fixed for your version, or not? What it you're using a 10-year old version and a n…

How do manufacturers of physical products handle defects? Aren't they obligated to correct defects through recalls and similar mechanisms? I don't see why software wouldn't work similarly.

Not always, it depends on the defect. There are many, many design defects that do not significantly impact the working of the device that will not get repaired, but would usually be patched in regular software (especially for visual design or bad UX like a literal rough edge on a physical product). Recalls in particular are very rare - they generally only happen for very serious faults, usually those that affect the safety of the device.

Also note that expectations can vary quite a bit between physical and software products. For an example, my vacuum cleaner fairly often shuts down if I stop and re-start it too soon. If this happened with an app, I would certainly consider it a pretty ugly bug, and might ask when they plan to fix it. But I would never consider sending the vacuum cleaner to a service station to try and get rid of it - and I think there is little chance they could fix it even if I did.

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

#195

Post by vladms »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #178
Grombobulous wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you have demonstrated with this comment, customers don’t really understand that there’s no such thing as “the product is done and costs are no longer incurred” even if the product is 100% done, and this is especially true on commercial app stores. It costs $99/year to keep your app on the Apple App Store. Stop paying and all apps are delisted. It costs $5/month to maintain a business phone line (Apple needs a phon…

Yep. Businesses have overhead. There are plenty of businesses that have all that overhead and still sell things instead of subscriptions. Flip this argument around: you go buy a rake at the hardware store. They tell you they need to charge $5 a month for as long as you want to use it since they have to pay for a phone and website, no apple fee, but their city business license is more than that, etc. Precisely no one…

I think that for the physical store example the overhead is already included in the object price, and probably a significant part of it.

> If you want me to pay for your overhead of continued development

My recollection with the status of 20-30 years ago is that people would sell you buggy applications for huge amounts of money and then you would be on your own. Doing good applications, without bugs, supported on multiple platforms and multiple use-cases is very expensive and takes time. Not sure what was your experience with pay once and just use the app, maybe it was better...

The benefit of subscriptions is that everybody has more flexibility. The developers can work continuously on the application. The customers can already use it for less than a one time (very large price) and see if it fits their needs and can change their mind if things don't go in the right direction.

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

#196

Post by Grombobulous »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #178
Grombobulous wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you have demonstrated with this comment, customers don’t really understand that there’s no such thing as “the product is done and costs are no longer incurred” even if the product is 100% done, and this is especially true on commercial app stores. It costs $99/year to keep your app on the Apple App Store. Stop paying and all apps are delisted. It costs $5/month to maintain a business phone line (Apple needs a phon…

Yep. Businesses have overhead. There are plenty of businesses that have all that overhead and still sell things instead of subscriptions. Flip this argument around: you go buy a rake at the hardware store. They tell you they need to charge $5 a month for as long as you want to use it since they have to pay for a phone and website, no apple fee, but their city business license is more than that, etc. Precisely no one…

The problem is that you’re not really making the right analogy. For one thing, the hardware store isn’t staying in business because you bought a rake once that you’ll never buy again. They’re making money on the contractors coming in and repeatedly buying things like paint and drywall. They’re making money on you buying light bulbs, dish soap, and mulch every year for the rest of your life.

When you really think about all the things a hardware store sells, not a lot of it lasts forever.

As a customer I’m totally all for buy-once and FOSS software. But I recognize that it’s not always the economic reality.

There’s plenty of buy-once iOS software out there. I’m definitely not saying that developers can’t do it, merely that I don’t blame the ones who go subscription-based, and that a lot of customers don’t realize the ongoing costs associated with publishing an iOS app.

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

#198

Post by dghlsakjg »

Grombobulous wrote: post #196
dghlsakjg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Businesses have overhead. There are plenty of businesses that have all that overhead and still sell things instead of subscriptions. Flip this argument around: you go buy a rake at the hardware store. They tell you they need to charge $5 a month for as long as you want to use it since they have to pay for a phone and website, no apple fee, but their city business license is more than that, etc. Precisely no one…

The problem is that you’re not really making the right analogy. For one thing, the hardware store isn’t staying in business because you bought a rake once that you’ll never buy again. They’re making money on the contractors coming in and repeatedly buying things like paint and drywall. They’re making money on you buying light bulbs, dish soap, and mulch every year for the rest of your life. When you really think abou…

The hardware store isn’t a perfect analogy, but my grandpas hammer has yet to reach EOL. Hardware stores are FULL of profitable items that you only buy once, or are you replacing your toilets on a monthly basis? Pick a different store if it bothers you that the hardware store also sells consumables. Hell, pick a hardware vertical like tools or plumbing fixtures that only sell once. Specialty hardware stores exist for those things, and their business does not rely on consumables. Plenty of businesses that exist to sell you a product or service once and count on no repeat business. The jeweler I bought my wife’s engagement ring from is not expecting me to buy another. He’s quite successful still despite having to cover the overhead of running a workshop and storefront.

I’m not blaming the ones who go subscription based. I endorsed it as a model when it makes sense (when you are providing an ongoing connected service inherent to the product, eg.). Developing the next version of your software doesn’t qualify as a service in my mind.

I’m complaining about software that goes subscription based completely unnecessarily. Adobe is the perfect example. There is no reason I shouldn’t be able to just buy photoshop. That worked fine for decades. I don’t need a subscription to MS Word, either. What new development has happened in text editing since autosave was added a few decades ago?

I can still play my original copy of Half Life, and valve is doing fantastic selling software instead of subscriptions. Arguably they are one of the biggest and most loved by consumers for that.

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

#199

Post by solarkraft »

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…

Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I tend to tell people when I have the rare good support experience.

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

#200

Post by tlogan »

solarkraft wrote: post #199
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…

Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I tend to tell people when I have the rare good support experience.

I do the same.

Only very (awesome) good and very bad experiences are widely shared.

The problem is that creating a truly great (awesome) memorable support experience happens less than 5% of the time (as you said it is rare). And that experience is shared to 10 people in average: not really a lot.

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