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

#151

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

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.

When I go to a bakery and buy a roll of bread, some of the money I pay the bakery will be squirreled away for future purchases, improvements to the business, expansions, cover lean times, etc.

That margin is called profit and has been the standard way every single business ever has managed ongoing expenses outside of per-transaction costs forever.

Despite this "Gamble", businesses continue to function every day. Some fail, but that is a purposely designed part of the market. If you cannot forecast your costs and revenue, you are supposed to go out of business.

It's funny that only in the world of Tech, the supposedly magical world where you can do so much with so little and one individual can "Build" something used by millions, that suddenly customers have to bear the burden of the business's inability to forecast costs and profit.

What, do you also expect me to tip you when I download?

Keep in mind that the vast vast majority of software subscriptions do not let you continue using the product you have paid for when your subscription lapses, even when the product gets no more support!

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

#152

Post by thomassmith65 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #148

thomassmith65 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late to edit my comment, but here is one example of going above and beyond for this business: Uncommon Apps should create and maintain a pdf document with fair, useful information about competing podcast apps that do not use the subscription business model. When someone complains to Uncommon Apps about the subscription model, if Uncommon Apps cannot change the person's mind (which will be the usual case), then Un…

You may or may not be surprised to find out I have actually done this, and it did not in fact make the user happier but in fact enraged them that instead of doing what they wanted me to do I had pointed them to a competitor.

The most likely thing is that the person who contacted you wanted more acknowledgement from you that, in a lot of ways, subscriptions suck.

If that wasn't the root cause of his/her rage, it might be that the person felt the referral was a way to get rid of them, rather than a way to help them.

It's tricky because communication involves so many soft factors.

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

#153

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #118

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 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…

You think that's bad? You should see what the hole in the wall food place pays for rent every single month. They still don't require a subscription for their service.

None of that applies to Android, and it only applies to Apple because we have such abysmal regulation in the modern era, where you apparently aren't allowed to regulate business that happens with a computer for some reason.

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

#154

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

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/

> 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.

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

#155

Post by jwr » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #96

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 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.

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

#156

Post by padjo » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

I've worked in support and built support products. I've seen so many people come into the space and make this same mistake. Support is not a value centre. There are some useful signals buried in there but most of the interactions are net negative, the best you can do is be efficient. Very insightful write up, thanks for sharing.

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

#157

Post by timcobb » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

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…

OP's post clearly described his thought process and experience. What are experience are you basing your assertions on?

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

#158

Post by angiolillo » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #63

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.

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…

> What software companies need to do is sell versions, where the life time of the version usefulness is actually limited... Can the same not be found for many software products?

Some of the enterprise software I've worked on has an option that functions this way. You pay for a specific version which is supported for a few years. You can keep using it forever but if you want to keep getting security updates or live support then you'll have to buy a newer version that is still in its support window.

Having said that, it seems like most businesses seem to prefer subscriptions.

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

#159

Post by unsungNovelty » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #76

OPBoot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people in the comments are saying he did it for "likes" - that's a pretty harsh reading of the article. What I think a lot of people are missing is that the difference between supporting corporates who spend up to millions per year on your product and supporting end-users who are literlly counting every cent they spend is a huge gulf in terms of expectations, technical ability, professionalism.... the list g…

Thanks. I'm not really understanding the likes comment. What are likes in this context? I was very explicit in the post I thought providing better support would build customer relationships and improve retention, and I learned that really isn't true. Also I wrote this a couple days ago so the blog would have content and only submitted on a whim, had I known I'd get 10K views and 100 comments I would've written it mor…

For what it's worth, I see a lot of parallels to this and IT support. I found it genuine. Cheers.

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

#160

Post by davidwritesbugs » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

I was taught 20% of customers generate 80% of the work. It seemed borne out by experience and I mostly fucked them off, the surprise/outrage when I told them they weren’t a good fit and told to go elsewhere was something to behold.