2 builders who never spoke to each other
Write to affected customers before you write the post
Telling people what broke, in your own words and before it becomes public, converts an incident into evidence that someone is paying attention. Two founders report almost every affected customer staying, and several replying with encouragement, and daily notes while a bug is open are what separate support that keeps customers from support that creates advocates.
The method
- 01
Email every customer about an attack or outage yourself, before you write the public account of it.
- 02
When something breaks, email affected customers yourself, explain candidly what happened and thank them for waiting.
- 03
When a bug will take a day or two to fix, email everyone who reported it straight away to say you are on it, then send another short note each day it is still outstanding.
- 04
Copy your support inbox on every automated error email you send customers, so you can see how often failures happen and reach out first.
What it returned
- 2020
Fathom mailed its whole customer base about two weeks of targeted DDoS attacks in November 2020 ahead of publishing, and says every single reply was supportive.
Almost every customer handled this way kept paying, and several sent the author notes of encouragement
The author calls this small habit the line between support that merely keeps customers and support that turns them into advocates, because what people hate is silence
The author points out many users will retry the same thing ten times, hit the same error and quietly cancel without ever contacting support
Sources
- Chapter 6: Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · 5. Don’t Pre-build For Scale. · 2017-03-14
- Micro-SaaS Ebook: Retention & SupportTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Attitude hacks: Providing great support as a team of one · 2017-07-31
- Someone attacked our company - Fathom AnalyticsJack Ellis · usefathom.com · Smooth sailing · 2020-12-14
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
More in email
- Move the audience you rent onto a list you own7 unconnected
- Hold the schedule you promised to hold5 unconnected
- Decide whether cold email is worth what it signals5 unconnected · contested
- Settle who the publication is for before growing it5 unconnected
- Open the list before the product is real4 unconnected
- Send each subscriber the thing they told you they want4 unconnected