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
#2Hats off for trying this, good luck in English.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#3Does anyone know any good and easy to use service to provide paid phone support? For example, I want to charge something like $1 or $2 per minute.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#4It is very, very difficult to offer phone support as a solo developer, particularly at low price points (below e.g. $5k per year) and for low tech-literacy customers. You can still do it, if you need someone to talk to, you want to do customer development, or you have a customer who strikes your fancy for non-market reasons, but you probably should not message the expectation that you're available.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#5I created a shareware Tetris clone for OS X in the mid 2000s and provided my cell number in the readme. I'd get a trickle of calls from all over the world at all times of day. That's where I learned never to have a serial number generator that included the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0.
It was weird to be out and about and suddenly get a tech support call, but people were usually really nice.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#6Inspiring. Maybe I'll have the guts to become an indie dev someday.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#7Does anyone know any good and easy to use service to provide paid phone support? For example, I want to charge something like $1 or $2 per minute.
The point here is not what the advantage of phone support is but to provide the service personally. You can outsource anything, but if you read the article, the learnings you get from doing it yourself are invaluably useful.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#8It is very, very difficult to offer phone support as a solo developer, particularly at low price points (below e.g. $5k per year) and for low tech-literacy customers. You can still do it, if you need someone to talk to, you want to do customer development, or you have a customer who strikes your fancy for non-market reasons, but you probably should not message the expectation that you're available.
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Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#9This is a really great way to understand your customer. Think of it as analyzing product-market fit rather than support.
Re: As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support
#10I created a shareware Tetris clone for OS X in the mid 2000s and provided my cell number in the readme. I'd get a trickle of calls from all over the world at all times of day. That's where I learned never to have a serial number generator that included the number 0 since it looks so close to the letter 0. It was weird to be out and about and suddenly get a tech support call, but people were usually really nice.
I remember back in the early days of shareware and freeware apps and games where the developer would ask for a postcard if you enjoyed the app!
If I ever develop something really small and useful one day I’d love to get post cards from around the world!