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"Community driven support can hurt your startup" – Interview with Paras from VWO

16 points by pocha 16y ago

patrickyeon 16y ago
A tangential matter, where community-driven support may not hurt you, but providing your own support gives an advantage: If you're dealing with all the issues as they come in, you get a good feeling for how people are using your product, how they expect/wish it would work, and how they're mis-using and breaking it. I think of it as similar to top-quality brands that offer lifetime warantees (MEC in Canada, similar to REI, offers it on everything in their store). This way, if anything ever breaks out in the real world, the customer is likely to bring it back. While they are fixing it, they can examine it, and if they see a rash of broken straps of a certain design, they know to beef up that strap on the next spin. That's all before the advantages of customer loyalty, building a brand image/voice, or whatever other reasons.
TravisLS 16y ago
Community-driven support offers benefits beyond cost savings, for one, it allows users to get faster responses. Your email probably can't provide answers every hour, but a vibrant support community will. Additionally, it gives you a way to show publicly how friendly and responsive you are (assuming you participate in the community), which can impact your signups. We always offer both, a public support option, community, or Facebook page, and an obvious private email link. Most users seem very happy with that level of interaction.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  > Your email probably can't provide answers every hour, but a vibrant support community will. Perhaps, but if you have a service aimed at a relatively small number of high-value customers rather than trying to reach millions each paying peanuts, how likely is it that you will be able to develop such a support community?
- sruffell 16y ago
  I agree that the public / private option makes sense to me. However, regarding that the public option "...gives you a way to show publicly how friendly and responsive you are...", it also sometimes forces you to deal with people (competitors?) who want to use your forum to argue why your product may be lacking. There is also the occasional person who is upset that you or someone else hasn't taken up their issue that they mailed to the public list.

16 points by pocha 16y ago

A tangential matter, where community-driven support may not hurt you, but providing your own support gives an advantage: If you're dealing with all the issues as they come in, you get a good feeling for how people are using your product, how they expect/wish it would work, and how they're mis-using and breaking it. I think of it as similar to top-quality brands that offer lifetime warantees (MEC in Canada, similar to REI, offers it on everything in their store). This way, if anything ever breaks out in the real world, the customer is likely to bring it back. While they are fixing it, they can examine it, and if they see a rash of broken straps of a certain design, they know to beef up that strap on the next spin. That's all before the advantages of customer loyalty, building a brand image/voice, or whatever other reasons.

TravisLS 16y ago

Community-driven support offers benefits beyond cost savings, for one, it allows users to get faster responses. Your email probably can't provide answers every hour, but a vibrant support community will. Additionally, it gives you a way to show publicly how friendly and responsive you are (assuming you participate in the community), which can impact your signups. We always offer both, a public support option, community, or Facebook page, and an obvious private email link. Most users seem very happy with that level of interaction.

Silhouette 16y ago
> Your email probably can't provide answers every hour, but a vibrant support community will. Perhaps, but if you have a service aimed at a relatively small number of high-value customers rather than trying to reach millions each paying peanuts, how likely is it that you will be able to develop such a support community?
sruffell 16y ago
I agree that the public / private option makes sense to me. However, regarding that the public option "...gives you a way to show publicly how friendly and responsive you are...", it also sometimes forces you to deal with people (competitors?) who want to use your forum to argue why your product may be lacking. There is also the occasional person who is upset that you or someone else hasn't taken up their issue that they mailed to the public list.