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As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

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Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#121

Post by cpncrunch »

I offer phone, email and skype support (as a solo developer). Ratio of support queries I receive is roughly:

90% email 8% skype 2% phone

On my website's contact page I have a few sentences beside the email address saying that you should give as much information as possible about the problem, and that we reply within 1 business day but normally sooner. I think that implies two things: [1] we do actually reply to emails quickly, and [2] email is preferred for support.

Some people just prefer to talk to a human being, at least the first time they contact you. This is either due to them checking to make sure you are responsive and can be contacted, or they are frightened of technology and need a little hand-holding. If I didn't put my phone number of the website I might lose these customers. It doesn't really take much time to deal with, overall.

The only minor issue is that some people (mostly other developers, usually from India) seem to want submit all support requests via skype, and I have to push back at that because [1] it's intrusive and [2] it means I don't have a record of their previous support queries in my email. Unless it's a quick question, I usually email them back. Of course you have to balance the need to provide the support in the way the customer wants to make them happy vs not letting them suck up too much of your time.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#122

Post by erader »

dogles wrote: post #61
erader wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there! Support manager here. I've been leading support teams for years, led support QA teams, built troubleshooting processes and worked very closely with dev teams. A lot of what I wanted to bring up doesn't apply so much to solo dev's, but I want to vouch for non-devs and anyone that might start working on team. Support brains and developer brains are actually not that different. I see on HN way too often that d…

It’s support’s job to focus on one thing at a time, meanwhile it’s a coder’s job to try and keep dozens of things in mind at a time. Context switching IS hard regardless, but like you said, one of the roles has it baked into the job description. The crux here is that Programmer committed to X work done by the end of the week, and Support is effectively subtracting their time to accomplish X. This is a managerial prob…

I would hardly say it's supports job to focus on one thing at at time.

Most people that reach out to support are calling about a specific question or problem. Yes therapy calls do happen. They're not terribly common, but you'll hear about them because they are funny/egregious examples.

When a customer calls about their 1 thing, I can definitely look up the 1 answer or do the 1 fix for them. This is bad support though.

A good support team will listen to that customer, understand what they're needs are and fix that thing while make sure they are set up for success in the future. This means I'm checking different account/user statuses, feature usage, and billing history. I dot his while talking to them, but never letting them know I do this.

If I can understand their 1 question AND know who they are holistically, I can set them up for success and prevent more support tickets down the road.

If you've ever had a user or a profile sent to you in a bad/extreme state, you can bet that a series of 1-off support solutions could have lent to that.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#123

Post by meebs »

dhimes wrote: post #116
fapjacks wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my part, I recognized after I got married that I was coming home and applying the same mental model I used at work in conversations with my wife: I was there exclusively to solve problems. My wife just wanted me to listen while she told me about her day. This definitely increased the surface area for arguments, because in my years I've found that generally, wives want you to shut up and listen and empathize with…

It took me a long time to get this right too. I came across this amusing page and realized I wasn't a bad person, because there is a lot of truth to this. specifically, #39: http://showcase.netins.net/web/tash/rules/rules.html

Perpetuating MANLY IDEALS as a biological truth is silly.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#124

Post by crispyambulance »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #111
crispyambulance wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The daily transition from work to home is difficult for many couples and this problem has existed since forever, but it has _nothing_ to do with "being analytical" at work and then having to "be empathetic" at home. It doesn't matter what your job is or if you're a husband or a wife, there's a period of time after coming home from work that is beset with opportunities for arguments. Lots of people experience this, no…

> "it has _nothing_ to do with "being analytical" at work and then having to "be empathetic" at home." [citation needed] I doubt you (or anyone, for that matter) can make such a claim with scientific rigor. You are responding to a statement of someone's personal experience - for them, it very well may have something to do with switching from an analytical, critical state to a more empathetic one.

Definitely not claiming "scientific rigor" nor do I think it would be worth it to even try.

The argument-after-work scenario, however, has been around for a long time and is well known by marriage counselors.

https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-not-fight-with-your-spouse-wh...

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#125

Post by dangerlibrary »

crispyambulance wrote: post #124
dangerlibrary wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "it has _nothing_ to do with "being analytical" at work and then having to "be empathetic" at home." [citation needed] I doubt you (or anyone, for that matter) can make such a claim with scientific rigor. You are responding to a statement of someone's personal experience - for them, it very well may have something to do with switching from an analytical, critical state to a more empathetic one.

Definitely not claiming "scientific rigor" nor do I think it would be worth it to even try. The argument-after-work scenario, however, has been around for a long time and is well known by marriage counselors. https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-not-fight-with-your-spouse-wh...

FTA:

> Different needs. Both parties are likely to be in different mental and emotional states with differing sets of personal needs, and while this may seem self-evident, it’s striking how many couples forget this when they walk in the door.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#126

Post by gspetr »

bonesss wrote: post #99
SyneRyder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth skipping out the letters S and number 5, the letter G and number 6, and the letter B and number 8. I also omit vowels to avoid accidentally creating words in serial codes.

I autogenerate passwords exclusively using lower case 'L's, the letter i in both cases, the number 1, and pipe characters.

There's room for improvement. What about the "!"? Gotta catch those folks with poor eyesight.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#127

Post by oblib »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #76
oblib wrote: post #21

I've been doing this for over 15 years with an invoicing app I have and I've got to know a lot users pretty well over that time. My app is simple and easy to use, and I've made "Training Videos" for just about everything you can do with, and I've had years to work out any bugs that have popped up, so I don't get a lot of calls anymore. But every call is a chance to learn something and improve the app and I pay very c…

Sounds like a good book. Was it #1 or #2? 1: http://amzn.com/0201177536 2: http://amzn.com/B00E7JO100

It was the first one. I may still have that book somewhere amongst my "stuff".

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#128

Post by oblib »

CardenB wrote: post #29
oblib wrote: post #21

I've been doing this for over 15 years with an invoicing app I have and I've got to know a lot users pretty well over that time. My app is simple and easy to use, and I've made "Training Videos" for just about everything you can do with, and I've had years to work out any bugs that have popped up, so I don't get a lot of calls anymore. But every call is a chance to learn something and improve the app and I pay very c…

How do you deal with conflicting ideas of how something should work? I'm sure there are a set of users who wish your app worked in one way, while another set of users feel strongly that it works in an opposing way. How do you reconcile that?

If it's something that most users would find handy I will implement it.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#129

Post by wickawic »

dhimes wrote: post #116
fapjacks wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my part, I recognized after I got married that I was coming home and applying the same mental model I used at work in conversations with my wife: I was there exclusively to solve problems. My wife just wanted me to listen while she told me about her day. This definitely increased the surface area for arguments, because in my years I've found that generally, wives want you to shut up and listen and empathize with…

It took me a long time to get this right too. I came across this amusing page and realized I wasn't a bad person, because there is a lot of truth to this. specifically, #39: http://showcase.netins.net/web/tash/rules/rules.html

This page is very silly, it basically says 'men get to do what they want when they want'. I like how the longest rule is about being 'single-minded', which is basically just an excuse for not taking part in all facets of your relationship.

Here is another perspective which you may find equally dumb:

https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

Note that this comic is coming from a totally female perspective (scary!) but it really applies either way. For instance, in my marriage I am the one who feels like the chore-czar, while my wife is the one who tends to feel like the planning-czar. If we both realize this and try to meet in the middle it makes things go a lot more smoothly.

Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support

#130

Post by WhitneyLand »

What a mundane post and simplistic topics. Yet it was outstanding. How come I loved reading it? Nice work Non.

One thing that wasn’t a big point, but I hope most people appreciate: Founders/developers/key employees doing some phone support is not tactical grunt work, it can be a strategic, powerful weapon.

In essence, it’s white glove, world class customer service. That alone is good, but what makes it so powerful is it’s on a very small list of things that AmaFaceGoogSoft and other large companies can almost never match you at. In fact forget beating you, they often do poorly at it. Every know anyone who left angry after dealing with F500 support?

In a past life I’ve used high six figure “enterprise” support agreements, w/VIP status. Yes, way better than the Windows consumer help line, but hard even then to match your service. 1MM/yr enterprise support doesn’t buy a product dev or exec. Ironically, it’s easy to lunch with them, but they’re not handling your daily tickets.

Your sales person (you I guess :-) should use it as a club against big companies and do your best to beat them to death with it.

Other things you touched on can also be strategic. Gaining valuable insights (admittedly not the only channels for this) that optimizes your roadmap, occasionally is the difference between staying afloat and sinking.

Of course the reality check is, how much time can you allocate when not only is development a life blood role, you probably wear other hats as well? I don’t think there’s a stock answer, depends on team/company/stage/everything else in the balance.

Anecdotally, I can say one customer relationship built this way turned out to be the connection that led to the acquisition of my company. However as usual, it was impossible to foresee when the contact request email came in.

I mean it as a compliment that you’re post seems deceptively ordinary (speaking plainly is good), I hope people will mine the true value of it. Thanks for writing it, best of luck to you going forward.

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