4 ms·

Ask HN: SAAS Clients who care too much about company people and not product

4 points by codegeek 11y ago

If you run a SAAS and you have a small team or even 1 man bootstrapped, how do you deal with potential clients who care too much about you and your company instead of the actual product that they are getting ? Is that sign of a bad client ? Should we worry about onboarding clients like that who want to know all about your and your past before they signup ?

10dpd 11y ago
I would translate that into 'potential clients who are concerned that you are not going to be around for the long term, be able to provide support, offer assurances on security, data integrity etc' Frankly any client that isn't interested in all of the above is a bad client.
- twunde 11y ago
  I'd agree with this assessment that it's just a customer doing due diligence. I will say that these customers tend to be more enterprisey with all the implications therein
  - shoo 11y ago
    yeah. i do not have a great deal of experience in this space, but i have observed enterprise customers happily pay $50k / year for remote support (...which would translate into a few days / month of effort responding to email support requests, etc...). > 'potential clients who are concerned that you are not going to be around for the long term, be able to provide support, offer assurances on security, data integrity etc' if you are dealing with a large enterprisey potential client, then arguably they may be happy paying you dramatically more money for these assurances. perhaps they would actually be happier paying you more, as then they know that they would be one of your most valued clients.
citizens 11y ago
I run a couple of SAAS solo and the topic has never come up.
jasonkester 11y ago
The nice thing about Software as a Service is that you can happily lose any single customer and not even notice it. If you get a creepy one, you can simply go dark and things will take care of themselves. That said, this seems pretty rare. I've had casual questions at the end of support conversations (which seem only natural given the expatsoftware.com link in the product site footer), and I sometimes get asked how big the team is on sales calls for large accounts. But never anything so intrusive as you describe. But if it ever happened, I wouldn't give it a moment's thought. Just mark the mail read and go on leading your life.
mtmail 11y ago
It's perfectly reasonable for potential clients to worry if our company is stable and will still be around in one year's time. It's just weird (ironic?) to hear those questions from other startups or lone developers, the "I'm currently working on an app in my spare time" type. So far everybody was happy with the answers, from small to enterprise. Sometimes I wonder if they ask only to see if we (a person) actually call back.
iqonik 11y ago
This comes up all the time, the best thing to do is use it to your advantage. I assume your SaaS offers support, if you're a small team, when they call they will always speak to someone they have spoken to before, if you're a one-man-band, they are speaking to the CEO of the company every time they have a query. They don't have to wait for decisions to filter through, they will get an immediate response. If they're worried about committing because you might go bust, offer a rolling monthly contract with the option to have 2 month free if they sign up for a year. You'll be surprised how many go for the year after 2-3 months of paying full price. Edit: Just to be clear, they aren't nightmare customers - they are within their right to know who they are doing business with. Just don't be ashamed if you're small, turn it around.
cjaccount 11y ago
As an alternate viewpoint - rather than overly involved clients, as a buyer of SAAS services my current bête noire with small teams or 1 man bootstrapped SAAS apps is more that its often really difficult to end the trial of a new SAAS or cancel an account. They seem to take it more personally. Trying to cancel a SAAS subscription these days usually leads to seemingly endless (often "cute") emails to try and stop you cancelling, often giving you unwanted trial extensions, or needing to fill in forms requiring mandatory feedback on why you're cancelling or enrolling you in a drip feed of emails extolling the app which you then have to unsubscribe from. Its got to the point where I've become reluctant to try new apps, knowing that I will be subject to this kind of thing. To me, small SAAS app people, in an attempt to increase conversions and improve retention are becoming increasingly annoying. SAAS people : if, as a customer, I decide your product is not for me, please make cancelling a 1 step process.
- codegeek 11y ago
  I agree with you. But I would say that if a client is cancelling, it is fair to try and ask them why they didn't want to use the app. This helps improve the product and for a small SAAS, this kind of feedback is golden. Here is what we do usually. If a client asks to cancel, we will send them a confirmation email saying that account is cancelled but if there is any feedback they can give to help us improve, we will appreciate that. Almost 90% of the time, clients do give feedback when we do this. But thats all. No more second email or a barrage of newsletter emails.

4 points by codegeek 11y ago

10dpd 11y ago

I would translate that into 'potential clients who are concerned that you are not going to be around for the long term, be able to provide support, offer assurances on security, data integrity etc' Frankly any client that isn't interested in all of the above is a bad client.

twunde 11y ago
I'd agree with this assessment that it's just a customer doing due diligence. I will say that these customers tend to be more enterprisey with all the implications therein
- shoo 11y ago
  yeah. i do not have a great deal of experience in this space, but i have observed enterprise customers happily pay $50k / year for remote support (...which would translate into a few days / month of effort responding to email support requests, etc...). > 'potential clients who are concerned that you are not going to be around for the long term, be able to provide support, offer assurances on security, data integrity etc' if you are dealing with a large enterprisey potential client, then arguably they may be happy paying you dramatically more money for these assurances. perhaps they would actually be happier paying you more, as then they know that they would be one of your most valued clients.

citizens 11y ago

I run a couple of SAAS solo and the topic has never come up.

jasonkester 11y ago

The nice thing about Software as a Service is that you can happily lose any single customer and not even notice it. If you get a creepy one, you can simply go dark and things will take care of themselves. That said, this seems pretty rare. I've had casual questions at the end of support conversations (which seem only natural given the expatsoftware.com link in the product site footer), and I sometimes get asked how big the team is on sales calls for large accounts. But never anything so intrusive as you describe. But if it ever happened, I wouldn't give it a moment's thought. Just mark the mail read and go on leading your life.

mtmail 11y ago

It's perfectly reasonable for potential clients to worry if our company is stable and will still be around in one year's time. It's just weird (ironic?) to hear those questions from other startups or lone developers, the "I'm currently working on an app in my spare time" type. So far everybody was happy with the answers, from small to enterprise. Sometimes I wonder if they ask only to see if we (a person) actually call back.

iqonik 11y ago

This comes up all the time, the best thing to do is use it to your advantage. I assume your SaaS offers support, if you're a small team, when they call they will always speak to someone they have spoken to before, if you're a one-man-band, they are speaking to the CEO of the company every time they have a query. They don't have to wait for decisions to filter through, they will get an immediate response. If they're worried about committing because you might go bust, offer a rolling monthly contract with the option to have 2 month free if they sign up for a year. You'll be surprised how many go for the year after 2-3 months of paying full price. Edit: Just to be clear, they aren't nightmare customers - they are within their right to know who they are doing business with. Just don't be ashamed if you're small, turn it around.

cjaccount 11y ago

As an alternate viewpoint - rather than overly involved clients, as a buyer of SAAS services my current bête noire with small teams or 1 man bootstrapped SAAS apps is more that its often really difficult to end the trial of a new SAAS or cancel an account. They seem to take it more personally. Trying to cancel a SAAS subscription these days usually leads to seemingly endless (often "cute") emails to try and stop you cancelling, often giving you unwanted trial extensions, or needing to fill in forms requiring mandatory feedback on why you're cancelling or enrolling you in a drip feed of emails extolling the app which you then have to unsubscribe from. Its got to the point where I've become reluctant to try new apps, knowing that I will be subject to this kind of thing. To me, small SAAS app people, in an attempt to increase conversions and improve retention are becoming increasingly annoying. SAAS people : if, as a customer, I decide your product is not for me, please make cancelling a 1 step process.

codegeek 11y ago
I agree with you. But I would say that if a client is cancelling, it is fair to try and ask them why they didn't want to use the app. This helps improve the product and for a small SAAS, this kind of feedback is golden. Here is what we do usually. If a client asks to cancel, we will send them a confirmation email saying that account is cancelled but if there is any feedback they can give to help us improve, we will appreciate that. Almost 90% of the time, clients do give feedback when we do this. But thats all. No more second email or a barrage of newsletter emails.