Engaging with Customers.

There's an interesting thread in one of the shareware authors newsgroups now about users/customers emailing in to software vendors. Most of the people contributing were of the attitude that people don't want to email, that the user expectation is that software companies don't want to get email, that they'll only complain about bugs or dumb problems, and basically the less email they get from users the better - "no news is good news".

I have an idea where a lot of that is coming from - a lot of people doing shareware level apps do view support as an unwelcome and time-consuming activity, detracting from "real work". Part of it too, is that many apps are so inexpensive (e.g. $20) that you can't justify the time. And certainly, most peoples' support experiences with large software companies are not pleasant.

I tend to prefer the other approach - initiate personal contact with potential customers in the hopes of engaging in some kind of dialog. They realize that someone wants to listen, if they have problems they're more likely to bring them up if asked, and they can raise all kinds of other questions. Great support, responsiveness, the human touch - even for our trial users, before they've even purchased. It's a huge differentiator that smaller companies can use to their advantage, if they want to. It's certainly one thing that works well to our favour, and has very tangible benefits (increased sales and upgrades, users evangelizing for us, better product through working closer with customers, etc.).

So now you know why when you go to get a demo license for CourseForum or ProjectForum, it's sent to you via email rather than just put on the web - and why the "just wanted to check how things were going" email arrives a few days later. Sure, requiring people to give out this information means we get fewer demo requests than otherwise (but you can also use the free version of the program without giving any information), but making that tradeoff was an easy choice.

Would this work if we were charging ten bucks for the software? For me, no, it's just not worth my time, though everyone has different motivations in that regard (and that's great!). But it does underline that support, pricing and business model should all be carefully and consciously considered. If you want to offer great support, think of what that would mean if you are getting tons of customers (so increased support and customer interaction), but each one is paying only ten bucks. Would you be happy with that situation?

Basically, what kind of software company do you want to have?