Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

> While I understand that no one wants to wait a few hours for a response to their question, if you’re bootstrapping with a small team you’re likely not going to be available 24 hours per day.

In my experience, customers who sign up, demand immediate customer support, then cancel a few hours later because they didn't get it, are doing you a favor - imagine what a drag on your customer support efforts they'd be if they stayed!

My rule of thumb is customer support thru email should aim for 24h turnaround, except if they're paying for "premium support". Great if you answer in 5min because you were just at the helm, but you shouldn't set unreasonable expectations.

Live support is murkier - if you do have set it up and are offline, falling back to email that gets answered tomorrow does seem slow, just by the fact you've just anchored me to "live". In my opinion, don't do it (or hide the widget!) unless you can really provide near-realtime response (even if via outsourced 1st level support agents).

Support is the oxygen to the brain. Its a schlep if you dont like people in general but its the one time you can personally talk to someone who is validating your business.

I always see a potential relationship there and you know what? People reciprocate. I once got a call and the customer was telling me her company was unsubscribing. She didn't have to tell me. Can you imagine waking up and telling a Mailchimp that you are unsubscribing?

Long story short, support is one of the infinity stones. If you do nothing else --- do that!

I'm also in the camp of not offering live support. For most businesses who don't have a 24/7 staffing for the live chat, it's best to avoid it altogether as it creates unrealistic expectations in the customers.

Customers who require instant support at whatever hours will likely find some dissatisfaction in working with your bootstrapped solo founder company now or in the near future. Best to offload them to companies who are ready and structured to help them.

100%

I disagree. When you’re starting out, support is one of your key differentiating features. Customers will love you and stick with you because you’re there to help them when they need it.

Those conversations, beyond just delighting your customers, are where you really learn the most about them and their needs. It’s where you get to live their pain and understand what you can do to build a better product. I’d recommend being ready to jump on the phone with someone the moment they reach out for help.

Also, you can be honest about out of hours times - people understand that you can’t be there at 1am (though, lord knows I’ve done plenty of support with customers on the other side of the world at that time). But if you’re a tiny company getting established, you’ll be on hand at all hours, even if it’s a bit antisocial. Nobody is as loyal a customer as someone you’ve bent over backwards to help late at night or on a Sunday afternoon.

24 hours can make it hard to coordinate times to talk (maybe they were expecting you to call back that day but not the next one), but is still great service in my field. Responding within a few hours and in person is definitely going the extra mile and will win you fans.

> people understand that you can’t be there at 1am (though, lord knows I’ve done plenty of support with customers on the other side of the world at that time).

That is the most pleasure I take. Underpromising, yet answering tickets or taking a call at midnight. It happens once or twice a month. For the call, she told me she was stuck with a customer demo, in exchange I made clear that I wasn’t « in a work environment » and all went well.

Those customers seem to get emotionally attached to us. In fact, they’re the only kind who give reviews on the Atlassian Marketplace (either those for positive reviews or the occasional disappointed person). They are a bit idealists though, and I don’t see them after two years, whereas corporate customers stay for much longer.

I completely agree that bending over backwards for users is a competitive advantage and customers won't forget it. But that does need to somehow reconcile with your availability and life outside of work—that's the rub for small bootstrapped companies.

I agree with your points here. Expectation setting is key.

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