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tenacity is key, but personally, I don't think 'soul suck' relates at all to 'hard work' except in the sense that soul sucking work is hard. 'Soul suck' is al
by lsc 17y ago
tenacity is key, but personally, I don't think 'soul suck' relates at all to 'hard work' except in the sense that soul sucking work is hard. 'Soul suck' is almost always a sign that work is being done that doesn't need to be done, or that work is being done in an inefficient manner.
In my space, the major 'soul suck' for most people is phone support and sales. I simply don't provide those services (and I've lowered my prices to compensate)
The thing is, when it's your company, you never have to do something you think is stupid. (yeah, you still do some stupid things, or, at least, I do, but when I notice it's stupid, I stop.) It's completely different from working for some PHB because when a customer gets unreasonable, it's simple enough to simply refer him or her to your nearest competitor.
Sure, you still have to do things that are /hard/ but there is always a clear reason why you are doing the thing, and if you don't think that reason is good enough? you don't have to do the work.
- stcredzero 17y agoIn my space, the major 'soul suck' for most people is phone support and sales. I've often wondered if it would be possible to offer people a chance to outsource phone support in the small business or startup space?
- lsc 17y agoIt would certainly be possible; people do it even. (I don't know of anyone targeting small companies specifically, but there's no reason why it would need to be difficult to setup.) But, it's something that is so difficult to do right that I personally am probably better off not doing it at all. /bad/ phone support, at least for my target market, is worse than none at all. (this is quite different if you target more business oriented and/or less technically oriented people.) That's the thing about phone tech support; it's cheap and easy to do badly, and really difficult and expensive to do well. You need to look at who your customers are and decide if bad phone support is better than no phone support at all, unless you have more volume than I have and a higher margin than I have.
- stcredzero 17y agoJust a first-order filter to answer FAQ items might be worthwhile, with messages taken for callback.
- lsc 17y agoa phone faq? Really? when I hit those as a customer I assume that the company in question thinks that 1. I am illiterate and 2. my time has no value. I mean, sure, I'm a nerd and hate talking to people over the phone. But talking to a machine over the phone is even worse. The advantage of phone support is it's immediacy. if you get rid of that, you might as well eliminate the phone altogether.