Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by true_religion » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #67

true_religion wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like to think of physical products as one offs where what you buy tomorrow is the same as what you buy today. But I have run a bakery for 5 years, and you get better day by day, you introduce new techniques, find different flours, optimize bake times for fluffiness, crispiness, and taste. The croissants we make today are much better than what we made during our first month. We improved our product just like how so…

We don't charge for night mode. I don't really think versioning would work very well for us, many have tried, but I do agree Apple should facilitate other business models like this in a better way.

On https://castro.fm/

It says Castro plus has advanced features, side loading, night mode, icons and more.

If you don’t charge for it, then highlighting it as part of the Plus package is confusing.

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

#202

Post by jaffa2 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

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.

well. perhaps through some kind of reverse psychology, i decided to check it out. turns out its a podcast player. which IS of interest to me since the apple podcast player is truly horrendous to use.

The migration of podcasts from apple podcast to this is quite good.

I don't understand what the X and tick buttons do. Interface is pretty dense, with pop up fucntions I count about 6 'rows' of 'buttons' that i can choose to press. that's quite a lot

my biggest issue with the podcasts app is just getting back to the podcast show page so i can choose the next program. I can't seem to do it on your app either.

from the main play screen (which as fasr as i can see is only accessibly by pressing a tiny up arrow at the lower left of the screen) I then press the big picture - it takes me to the episode. then i click the show banner and it takes me to the list not bad. But then how do i get back to the main show player? If i click the show (that's playing) it does this weird extra row of buttins (play X tick star and inbox) ..

do i need to click the tiny right arrow icon. OK this takes me to the episode details. I tried to click 'play' again at the bottom but it linked me to a sponser link since there appears to be a hyperlink in the descriptino text under the play button. I don't know how to get back to the main playback page that shows the picture and gives me the big controls. I've spent a few mins on this so far going in circles. Presed Tick a few times, i still don't know what it does.

Nope. I can't find out how to get to the main page. Also its difficult to tell if a podcast is actually playing or not. (i have sound turned down as I do all this)

I will maybe check it out a bit more but It seems very fiddly and twitchy.

IMO podcast app needs a couple of things :

1. constant playback/progress bar. If a podcast is playing, at all times I should have a progress bar, with skip,back,pause controls.

2. I should be able to one press back to the main play screen 3. one press backto the podcast show page (with the list of eps) 4. one press back to the podcast list page (with list of podcasts)

I do like what looks like nice speed adjuster, sleep, and audio enhancers . not tried yet.

hah i feel a bit thick as I still can't work out how to get back to a screen n that shows the currently playing podcast with a progress bar. lol.

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

#203

Post by hn_acc1 » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #147

fredsters_s wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Especially in 2026 with the majority of traffic being bots..

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

#204

Post by hn_acc1 » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:28 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #186

elevation wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That depends. My employer sells to enterprise / Fortune 500 companies. We have very responsive support staff. We've been around 15+ years.

The question was asked: would we ever consider a scaled-down version of our product for the consumer market? The answer was: we don't know how to give bad support, so we can't play in the consumer market.

So I'll agree for the CONSUMER space. For the B2B space, companies with good/great support do exist. Now, maybe our level of support is similar to other companies in the same space (no idea), but if you escalate, you will have someone respond within a given amount of time, we take our SLAs seriously, etc, etc.

Anecdote: AMD RMAing my Ryzen 1700 due to the hardware issues the early chips had and shipping me a new one, no questions asked definitely improved my feelings towards AMD compared to say, Intel's response to FDIV (yes, I am that old - I remember that playing out in real-time on usenet).

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

#205

Post by hn_acc1 » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

Thanks for this. As a 30+ years software developer, I empathize with your pain, understand your points, etc.

I also am old-school and would expect reasonable support / fixes from $200+ software packages back in the day. These days, for apps? I use like 3 on my phone, so I'm not the target consumer..