7 ms·

Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing ear

by shash7 2y ago

Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing early stage pain points. - You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. - Invest in good docs, even if you're not running a api saas. Good docs + consistent ux + rock solid support will solve most of your support issues. I think a lot of literature around running a online biz has been boiled down to rather basic advice and its hard to find anything solid in this area. I've been running a small blog where I document these issues(operational.co) if anyone wants to check it out.

thehappyfellow 2y ago
Do you have an example of “polite but curt” tone? I’m struggling to see what you mean.
- xyproto 2y ago
  Thanks for reaching out. The issue you’ve described seems to be on your end. Please check your settings or consult our docs for further guidance. If the problem persists, feel free to get in touch.
  - Gustomaximus 2y ago
    Would it be worth putting a price to investigating? Message like: "Our premium support can investigate this for $XYhr. If the fault is at our end we will waive any fees. Please let us know if you wish to proceed."
    - filoleg 2y ago
      Take my advice with a grain of salt, as I am a customer rather than someone running a product with customer support. I would say this would only feel justified if the product pricing page already had clear tiers outlined for paid support. Putting a price per hour on customer support otherwise would make me feel like I am just being milked behind closer doors for more money, and non-paying customers are getting shafted. If a paid customer support tier is something you offer, imo it should be clearly outlined on publicly available pages with explicit explanation about the differences between free vs paid customer support. You suggesting it in private communications only would feel suspicious and shady to me as a customer. However, if the customer themselves suggested to pay you extra for that personal support, that’s a different story.
      - kadoban 2y ago
        That's fair, but also: sometimes the customer going away and not using the product anymore is the correct result for both sides.
    - zie 2y ago
      Oooh, the Microsoft approach! :)
  - Aachen 2y ago
    I'd 100% expect that to be a template from someone who either has no clue and can't investigate, or has 200 other tickets to get to and couldn't be bothered to look into a case that isn't in the FAQ. It also does not say what makes you have this assumption and so it works only as a brick wall to alienate any customer goodwill you may have built up. Please never write this unless it's self evident why it's on the customer's side and you have good reason to think they're just trying to annoy you by reaching out despite that
    - xyproto 2y ago
      I hate this type of communication too, including templates and chatbots. It was just an example, though.
- HelloMcFly 2y ago
  [flagged]
- blantonl 2y ago
  "Check yourself before you wreck yourself"
- shash7 2y ago
  Both xyproto and Gustomaximus have solid examples. Here's more: - Be direct, Hi, the xyz feature is available on the PRO plan. You can upgrade to the PRO plan at app.saas.com/billing - Be brutal, Hi xyz, your card couldn't be charged for your Saas subscription, and hence your subscription has been deactivated. To reactivate, enter your card details app app.saas.com/billing - Be honest, Hello xyz, thanks for the feature request. We'll put it in our wish list but can't guarantee it will make the cut. - Be generous, Hey xyz, thanks for pointing that out. We have identified that as a bug and have pushed a fix for it. In the meanwhile, I've extended your trial by 7 days, on the house. Couple of other tips: - Dumb down your reply as much as possible. If you can't, throw your reply through chatgpt and make it dumb down. - Unless a support issue is very basic, reply after a few minutes if you're near your computer. Usually users figure out things on their own if given some time. - But don't allow issues to go stale. To really wow customer service, reply as humanely quick as possible, especially for existing customers. - Make your support timelines clear somewhere in your product, eg: Our support will respond within max 48 hours, but most responses take 2-3 hours. - Make your terms and privacy policy pages clear. People do read this. getharvest.com is a gold standard in this area.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Just wanted to say thanks, I think you've given great advice. In particular this bullet point: > But don't allow issues to go stale. To really wow customer service, reply as humanely quick as possible, especially for existing customers. As a customer, the absolute worst possible thing for me is to be left in limbo, not knowing if my problem will be fixed in the next minute, hour, day, or never. While I may not be thrilled if the answer is "never", at least at that point I can move on and know that I'll need to solve the problem some other way.
    - hermitcrab 2y ago
      But if you respond consistently quickly, then some lazy customers will email you rather than bothering to look in the documentation. So there can be a downside to being too responsive.
  - 2y ago
- benatkin 2y ago
  From the sound of it, the politeness is the shallow politeness that you can easily get with ChatGPT. The curtness is defending from the users expecting too much, which can include delaying handling issues before properly checking if they're real. I experienced this with Vercel and it probably makes economic sense for them. (BTW I really should cancel my Vercel account but haven't decided to take the time to migrate yet.) https://x.com/search?q=vercel%20benjaminatkin_&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=vercel%20benjaminatkin_&src=typed_que... The reason it can be framed as curtness is because they're being curt about the expectations, and the real expectations are pretty low. "Sure, I can delay really addressing the issue for a couple weeks. You're only paying me 40 bucks a month, why would you expect more? The goal of responding within two days is just for a canned response." See, they were curt and didn't let me demand something more than I deserved, like being able to use the product I'm paying for in the next several days!
duxup 2y ago
>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(
- wruza 2y ago
  I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learned behavior to avoid threaded pedantry or something, but my messages aren’t even long and other people share my frustration too (we communicate 10x faster and clearer between us). I’d write it off to attention capacity issues, but these people often aren’t even busy at all.
  - rodrigodlu 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's because they're not paying full attention, even worse, sometimes already building an intense narrative with only few items internalized inside their brains. I also feel that this is happening more and more, since there's more rewards for giving very small pieces of attention and energy to a bigger pool of people, instead giving extra energy or attention to a smaller pool of people seeking for one's help. I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house, a month ago was finding a decent mechanic to fix just 2 issues on my car. The first promptly finds energy to discuss things it receives through social networks or messages, but can't provide a decent list of things that I need to provide him to finish his work faster. The second case took a lot of time and discussing with 6 different mechanics, until th car broke and it was towed. I'm seeing this more and more, unfortunately.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
andrewljohnson 2y ago
Make sure not to apply this polite but curt tone to consumer apps.
remoquete 2y ago
Docs... And a technical writer that'll tend to them. https://passo.uno/signs-need-tech-writer/ https://passo.uno/signs-need-tech-writer/
- withinboredom 2y ago
  Spending some time to learn technical writing (if you want to bootstrap a saas) is worth its weight in gold (same with marketing, business admin, accounting).
lostemptations5 2y ago
Wow! This is a great blog. Thanks for putting it out :)
guzik 2y ago
> - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. Interesting. Anything you've automated successfully that you can share? I've heard so many times that you should hold off on automating too early because constant pivoting and refining can end up making you spend more time fixing the automation than actually doing the work itself, so I kinda paused on it. I can see how it would make a big impact on my marketing outreach, which I'm doing manually right now with not much success.
philsnow 2y ago
> You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support If this makes you uneasy, it can be easier if you sign initial support replies under another name. Hey, this is John, I'll be happy to help you with that. <Blah blah blah.> Let me know if that helps. --John
- whatshisface 2y ago
  "I'm escalating you to tier seven..."
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Or in some cases, be "Ed Chambers" from Silicon Valley. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CA2EW4Z_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CA2EW4Z_U
- eps 2y ago
  - Hey, this is John, I'll be happy to help you with that. + Hello Xxx, No need to fake being happy (or sorry). Just provide an actual answer.
  - myfavoritedog 2y ago
    [dead]
  - amerkhalid 2y ago
    Recently, I canceled a subscription for a newspaper, they make you go through chat to cancel. The agent was so nice that it was annoying. I don’t mind waiting in silence, but when they keep asking about weather, vacation plans, etc, I find it hard to not respond. This might part retention technique though.
    - vonunov 2y ago
      Outsourced call centers obsessing over dumb metrics like "dead air" and "hold time". They think you are gratified by obsequious groveling and fawning reassurance. There is always some guy in management who gives pep talks about improving outcomes by avoiding words like "can't" or "impossible". He demands improvement to an already satisfactory situation, and so they scramble to out-customer-service themselves.
samstave 2y ago
Ive had tremendous success submitting files to AI and just having it produce a structured readme.md for the logic within the code, I'll do a thing where I say Give me a readme, include description of functions, logic, how its invoked, dependencies, monitoring and give me a mermaid and swim diagram of the workflow. Its great. Another thing I do with an AI helper is when I have it write out a function for me I have it write out the descriptor that can go in the readme for that function. I also have it write a header with version description path etc. It was an experiment which started with the goal is to have all the code for a simple project with its associated readme functions loaded into a textai workflow and postgres DB and I can dynamically call the readme functions for everything by having a bot yank all the MD table for all the functions and just put together a real-time readme. As I add txtAI workflow scripts, they put their MDs into the DB, I try having it spit a JSON of its MD to a mongo? The point is playing with ways to have the system self document as I/it develops. Because one of the ways I have been using Claude to learn is through a F-ton of iterating on an initial thought and bird-walking through implementing a tool wrapped around it. This way, as I iterate through many many version of a concept or script/function/api/crawler - it keeps a reminder readme for when I want to know what the heck was I thinking (I have had super awesome moments of brilliance, and then after a sleep or lengthy distraction - totally loose the Mode and have no idea what I was doing, or how I came up with BrilliantIdea(TM) ADHD is a helluva drug :-(
- samstave 2y ago
  EDIT: One thing I attempted was to have claude keep a running artifact for a readme while I worked out a problem - but that didnt work so well. Also, as it hallucinates, one of the first indicators that its losing context is that I keep a header section on artifacts it makes and a version and description ad path for the artifact... when iterating and the header gets stripped in the response, the bot is taking a turn... Sometimes ask it to spit out the full context and its understandings in a manner I can use to re-prompt itself for best efficiency, and it gives a nice summary of the concept I am thinking through, and I use that with vary degrees of satifying results.
RachelF 2y ago
"- Invest in good docs..." In my experience, end users don't read the docs or FAQ's or help search - they send you a question.
- vonunov 2y ago
  Run stats on support requests and make canned/auto replies for the common ones?
- kadoban 2y ago
  Even if users don't read them of their own volition, they're still valuable. You can copy/paste responses from them, link to them, or hell just use them to remember the answer yourself later without having to confirm it or even think about it.
- jkukul 2y ago
  I think in the era of LLMs good docs/FAQ are of an even greater value. You can write a support bot that sends a user's question + docs/FAQ to an LLM to automatically deal with the basic questions and only involve a human in the loop once a question goes beyond what's in the docs.
  - Too 2y ago
    For a side project? Not even the big giants manage to create LLM bots that work.
bradleykingz 2y ago
[dead]
Loxicon 2y ago
> automating the heck out of everything What kinda things did you automate?

by shash7 2y ago

thehappyfellow 2y ago

Do you have an example of “polite but curt” tone? I’m struggling to see what you mean.

xyproto 2y ago
Thanks for reaching out. The issue you’ve described seems to be on your end. Please check your settings or consult our docs for further guidance. If the problem persists, feel free to get in touch.
- Gustomaximus 2y ago
  Would it be worth putting a price to investigating? Message like: "Our premium support can investigate this for $XYhr. If the fault is at our end we will waive any fees. Please let us know if you wish to proceed."
  - filoleg 2y ago
    Take my advice with a grain of salt, as I am a customer rather than someone running a product with customer support. I would say this would only feel justified if the product pricing page already had clear tiers outlined for paid support. Putting a price per hour on customer support otherwise would make me feel like I am just being milked behind closer doors for more money, and non-paying customers are getting shafted. If a paid customer support tier is something you offer, imo it should be clearly outlined on publicly available pages with explicit explanation about the differences between free vs paid customer support. You suggesting it in private communications only would feel suspicious and shady to me as a customer. However, if the customer themselves suggested to pay you extra for that personal support, that’s a different story.
    - kadoban 2y ago
      That's fair, but also: sometimes the customer going away and not using the product anymore is the correct result for both sides.
  - zie 2y ago
    Oooh, the Microsoft approach! :)
- Aachen 2y ago
  I'd 100% expect that to be a template from someone who either has no clue and can't investigate, or has 200 other tickets to get to and couldn't be bothered to look into a case that isn't in the FAQ. It also does not say what makes you have this assumption and so it works only as a brick wall to alienate any customer goodwill you may have built up. Please never write this unless it's self evident why it's on the customer's side and you have good reason to think they're just trying to annoy you by reaching out despite that
  - xyproto 2y ago
    I hate this type of communication too, including templates and chatbots. It was just an example, though.
HelloMcFly 2y ago
[flagged]
blantonl 2y ago
"Check yourself before you wreck yourself"
shash7 2y ago
Both xyproto and Gustomaximus have solid examples. Here's more: - Be direct, Hi, the xyz feature is available on the PRO plan. You can upgrade to the PRO plan at app.saas.com/billing - Be brutal, Hi xyz, your card couldn't be charged for your Saas subscription, and hence your subscription has been deactivated. To reactivate, enter your card details app app.saas.com/billing - Be honest, Hello xyz, thanks for the feature request. We'll put it in our wish list but can't guarantee it will make the cut. - Be generous, Hey xyz, thanks for pointing that out. We have identified that as a bug and have pushed a fix for it. In the meanwhile, I've extended your trial by 7 days, on the house. Couple of other tips: - Dumb down your reply as much as possible. If you can't, throw your reply through chatgpt and make it dumb down. - Unless a support issue is very basic, reply after a few minutes if you're near your computer. Usually users figure out things on their own if given some time. - But don't allow issues to go stale. To really wow customer service, reply as humanely quick as possible, especially for existing customers. - Make your support timelines clear somewhere in your product, eg: Our support will respond within max 48 hours, but most responses take 2-3 hours. - Make your terms and privacy policy pages clear. People do read this. getharvest.com is a gold standard in this area.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Just wanted to say thanks, I think you've given great advice. In particular this bullet point: > But don't allow issues to go stale. To really wow customer service, reply as humanely quick as possible, especially for existing customers. As a customer, the absolute worst possible thing for me is to be left in limbo, not knowing if my problem will be fixed in the next minute, hour, day, or never. While I may not be thrilled if the answer is "never", at least at that point I can move on and know that I'll need to solve the problem some other way.
  - hermitcrab 2y ago
    But if you respond consistently quickly, then some lazy customers will email you rather than bothering to look in the documentation. So there can be a downside to being too responsive.
- 2y ago
benatkin 2y ago
From the sound of it, the politeness is the shallow politeness that you can easily get with ChatGPT. The curtness is defending from the users expecting too much, which can include delaying handling issues before properly checking if they're real. I experienced this with Vercel and it probably makes economic sense for them. (BTW I really should cancel my Vercel account but haven't decided to take the time to migrate yet.) https://x.com/search?q=vercel%20benjaminatkin_&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=vercel%20benjaminatkin_&src=typed_que... The reason it can be framed as curtness is because they're being curt about the expectations, and the real expectations are pretty low. "Sure, I can delay really addressing the issue for a couple weeks. You're only paying me 40 bucks a month, why would you expect more? The goal of responding within two days is just for a canned response." See, they were curt and didn't let me demand something more than I deserved, like being able to use the product I'm paying for in the next several days!

duxup 2y ago

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

wruza 2y ago
I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learned behavior to avoid threaded pedantry or something, but my messages aren’t even long and other people share my frustration too (we communicate 10x faster and clearer between us). I’d write it off to attention capacity issues, but these people often aren’t even busy at all.
- rodrigodlu 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's because they're not paying full attention, even worse, sometimes already building an intense narrative with only few items internalized inside their brains. I also feel that this is happening more and more, since there's more rewards for giving very small pieces of attention and energy to a bigger pool of people, instead giving extra energy or attention to a smaller pool of people seeking for one's help. I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house, a month ago was finding a decent mechanic to fix just 2 issues on my car. The first promptly finds energy to discuss things it receives through social networks or messages, but can't provide a decent list of things that I need to provide him to finish his work faster. The second case took a lot of time and discussing with 6 different mechanics, until th car broke and it was towed. I'm seeing this more and more, unfortunately.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago

andrewljohnson 2y ago

Make sure not to apply this polite but curt tone to consumer apps.

remoquete 2y ago

Docs... And a technical writer that'll tend to them. https://passo.uno/signs-need-tech-writer/ https://passo.uno/signs-need-tech-writer/

withinboredom 2y ago
Spending some time to learn technical writing (if you want to bootstrap a saas) is worth its weight in gold (same with marketing, business admin, accounting).

lostemptations5 2y ago

Wow! This is a great blog. Thanks for putting it out :)

guzik 2y ago

> - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. Interesting. Anything you've automated successfully that you can share? I've heard so many times that you should hold off on automating too early because constant pivoting and refining can end up making you spend more time fixing the automation than actually doing the work itself, so I kinda paused on it. I can see how it would make a big impact on my marketing outreach, which I'm doing manually right now with not much success.

philsnow 2y ago

> You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support If this makes you uneasy, it can be easier if you sign initial support replies under another name. Hey, this is John, I'll be happy to help you with that. <Blah blah blah.> Let me know if that helps. --John

whatshisface 2y ago
"I'm escalating you to tier seven..."
Terr_ 2y ago
Or in some cases, be "Ed Chambers" from Silicon Valley. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CA2EW4Z_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-CA2EW4Z_U
eps 2y ago
- Hey, this is John, I'll be happy to help you with that. + Hello Xxx, No need to fake being happy (or sorry). Just provide an actual answer.
- myfavoritedog 2y ago
  [dead]
- amerkhalid 2y ago
  Recently, I canceled a subscription for a newspaper, they make you go through chat to cancel. The agent was so nice that it was annoying. I don’t mind waiting in silence, but when they keep asking about weather, vacation plans, etc, I find it hard to not respond. This might part retention technique though.
  - vonunov 2y ago
    Outsourced call centers obsessing over dumb metrics like "dead air" and "hold time". They think you are gratified by obsequious groveling and fawning reassurance. There is always some guy in management who gives pep talks about improving outcomes by avoiding words like "can't" or "impossible". He demands improvement to an already satisfactory situation, and so they scramble to out-customer-service themselves.

samstave 2y ago

Ive had tremendous success submitting files to AI and just having it produce a structured readme.md for the logic within the code, I'll do a thing where I say Give me a readme, include description of functions, logic, how its invoked, dependencies, monitoring and give me a mermaid and swim diagram of the workflow. Its great. Another thing I do with an AI helper is when I have it write out a function for me I have it write out the descriptor that can go in the readme for that function. I also have it write a header with version description path etc. It was an experiment which started with the goal is to have all the code for a simple project with its associated readme functions loaded into a textai workflow and postgres DB and I can dynamically call the readme functions for everything by having a bot yank all the MD table for all the functions and just put together a real-time readme. As I add txtAI workflow scripts, they put their MDs into the DB, I try having it spit a JSON of its MD to a mongo? The point is playing with ways to have the system self document as I/it develops. Because one of the ways I have been using Claude to learn is through a F-ton of iterating on an initial thought and bird-walking through implementing a tool wrapped around it. This way, as I iterate through many many version of a concept or script/function/api/crawler - it keeps a reminder readme for when I want to know what the heck was I thinking (I have had super awesome moments of brilliance, and then after a sleep or lengthy distraction - totally loose the Mode and have no idea what I was doing, or how I came up with BrilliantIdea(TM) ADHD is a helluva drug :-(

samstave 2y ago
EDIT: One thing I attempted was to have claude keep a running artifact for a readme while I worked out a problem - but that didnt work so well. Also, as it hallucinates, one of the first indicators that its losing context is that I keep a header section on artifacts it makes and a version and description ad path for the artifact... when iterating and the header gets stripped in the response, the bot is taking a turn... Sometimes ask it to spit out the full context and its understandings in a manner I can use to re-prompt itself for best efficiency, and it gives a nice summary of the concept I am thinking through, and I use that with vary degrees of satifying results.

RachelF 2y ago

"- Invest in good docs..." In my experience, end users don't read the docs or FAQ's or help search - they send you a question.

vonunov 2y ago
Run stats on support requests and make canned/auto replies for the common ones?
kadoban 2y ago
Even if users don't read them of their own volition, they're still valuable. You can copy/paste responses from them, link to them, or hell just use them to remember the answer yourself later without having to confirm it or even think about it.
jkukul 2y ago
I think in the era of LLMs good docs/FAQ are of an even greater value. You can write a support bot that sends a user's question + docs/FAQ to an LLM to automatically deal with the basic questions and only involve a human in the loop once a question goes beyond what's in the docs.
- Too 2y ago
  For a side project? Not even the big giants manage to create LLM bots that work.

bradleykingz 2y ago

[dead]

Loxicon 2y ago

> automating the heck out of everything What kinda things did you automate?