I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

Post by QuantumGood » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 1:43 AM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #253

QuantumGood wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer support isn't paid well, so they often aren't motivated to become very skilled beyond the level of a chatbot before they move on to other things. So the interface to bad docs doesn't matter much. And good docs are very hard to produce. AI magnifies problems when good docs are lacking.

> Customer support isn't paid well "We choose not to pay customer support well". I've worked at companies where customer support was both strongly supported, paid well and given the tools to do their jobs well. They were incredible.

Post by wahnfrieden » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #214

spacephysics wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve also seen customer support inquiries, and in general quality of our customers, rise with an increase in price. It doesn’t make sense as an end consumer, but B2B lens it makes sense. If a business can afford the higher price tag, they most likely would rather have a hands off approach for the problem they’re trying to solve (in a service based business) Many of our mid and lower tier customers want everything dr…

> We’ve also seen customer support inquiries, and in general quality of our customers, rise with an increase in price. Yes, but it should be noted that the price is acting as a filter to exclude a subset of customers, reducing overall customer count. Obviously it's easier to have 100 customers paying $100/month than to have 1000 customers paying $10/month, but finding those tradeoff points can be hard. It takes time…

Post by intelVISA » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 1:51 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #240

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how flows like that happen. Is Support just completely disconnected from Engineering? Do they not have a way to report issues and indicate that many customers are having a specific issue? Does the company believe that giving a customer a runaround will make them less upset than saying "Sorry, this is a known issue. We're working on it but do not have a timeline"? Certainly at some point, some support person…

Yes. Engineering time is expensive. Support exists to resolve problems without needing engineer time except when the company thinks that the problem is worthy of being addressed. The tendency to wall off engineers is often taken to a counterproductive level.

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 1:53 AM UTC

_se wrote: post #10

sklarsa wrote: post #5

I love the ending of this story, which isn't obvious from just looking at the title. The author identified key pain points around customer support, automated them, and went back to enjoying life. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited about the possibilities of technology and AI as a force multiplier, especially when working on side projects, "lifestyle" businesses, or even startups as a single founder.

No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.

Post by kukkeliskuu » Thu, Aug 22, 2024, 1:55 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #35

_se wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.

People want their support solved as quickly as possible. They don't want to talk to AI support bots because it's just an inefficient, error-prone wrapper over the documentation, which if you have an actual support need (as opposed to "I just haven't read any of the documentation") that kind of AI support isn't going to be helpful. If you have an AI customer support that can actually support customer service requests…