Hacker News Reader

Comment by cantankerous | Hacker News Reader

Just tossing it out there, but isn't the price point of a product also a big director in consumer expectations? Not that I support making a crappy product, but consumers who pay a lot more generally have higher expectations about what they're spending their money on (rightly so, at times). If you have a 1000 people who figure it's the price of a soda so who cares vs 10 people who won't get off your case about some pet feature they want. It's all hypothetical, but maybe something to keep in mind.

View on HN

You'd be surprised! In my experience, folks who pay A WHOLE NINETY NINE CENTS OF MY MONEY have very shockingly high expectations of polish / quality / feature selection (but no desire to e.g. read what the software actually does), whereas if someone signs e.g. a contract for $X0,000 for enterprise software, it lacks a feature, and they ask for it, "Thanks for the feedback, we'll consider adding that in a later release. In the meanwhile, I suggest ... as a work around" makes them absurdly happy.

For more on this topic, go to HNsearch.com and look for [patio11 pathological customers].

Absolutely see this for customers of iPhone apps. If. You're not careful the avalanche of customer service requests on a 99c app can sink you

Thanks, yeah I'll have to check that out. It seems like people sure can be nuts about their money.

Given that a 99c app will attract a _much_ larger user base, chances of running into those users who expect to sit on the front row seat for free also increases.

The nice thing is, they can be ignored, as long as you do it tactfully. If you lose them as a customer, it's no big loss. A single extremely high demanding big customer that pays in the ten to hundred thousands is hard to ignore. In fact, their high demands can run your business into the ground, if you're not careful.

"In my experience, folks who pay A WHOLE NINETY NINE CENTS OF MY MONEY have very shockingly high expectations of polish / quality / feature selection (but no desire to e.g. read what the software actually does)"

What you do? You shut them out.

Not "remote disable them". But feature/support requests policy has to be simple. Either a user forum, FAQ, etc

You should absolutely not waste your precious time with this kind of work. If they want a refund just give it to them (not sure how easy this is on App Store or others)

Also, if this is so overwhelming, raise the price If they really want this so much they can pay 1.99

You don't need to ignore everything they say, but take it with a huge grain of salt.

I can tell you from our experience with Stormpulse that this is 100% false and backwards. Those that pay more are more willing to work with you. Nothing more expensive than someone that expects the world for $10.

Maybe it's not that they pay more that makes them more likely to work with you, but rather there's something about people who have more money to spend (ex Enterprise-level customers) that changes their awareness of the realities of the solutions they buy.

They are convinced of the value and therefore less likely to abandon the product because of one negative. Whereas if you aren't sure the app is really doing something for you (making/saving you money), you're more likely to bail and just get your money back the moment it goes South.

That's a really good way of framing it. It's good to get insight from people who are in the thick of it (I'm not). Thanks!

I think that often the cheaper products tend to be the most polished. Let's say you are developing something with < 100 users, how good does the UX have to be?

Designing say a beautiful UI full of clever widgets is probably a waste of time vs adding features. It just needs to be "good enough" to use, if the users are having problems with it then it is probably more economical to get them in a room together and run a training session at which point they will grumble, stick some postits to their monitors and carry on.

I've developed some programs before that have had bugs and when I've offered to get right on and fix them I have been told by the client "don't bother, I'll just tell the users not to click that button under those circumstances".

With the cheaper app you are looking at ways to do things that will wow 100,000 people rather than just a few.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com