3 builders who never spoke to each other
Keep support in the founders' hands
Answering support yourself doubles as marketing, as sales and as the roadmap, because repeated questions are the feature list. Put a live chat channel on the site so the support conversation and the sales conversation are the same one, and give business customers the internal issue number so they can track the fix themselves.
The method
- 01
Handle support yourself and use it to learn what customers actually need, because that is what keeps churn down.
- 02
Keep support in the founders' hands, because it doubles as marketing and as sales while also telling you what to build next.
- 03
Put a real time chat channel on the site so support conversations and sales conversations are the same conversation.
- 04
Give a business customer the internal tracking number for their bug so they can see for themselves which release carries the fix, which removes most of the chasing on both sides.
- 05
Hand nightly builds to any customer who asks for one: the person who reported the problem validates the fix before it ships to everyone else.
What it returned
Time spent on support and customer conversations is credited with keeping Fathom's churn very low while signups climbed from a couple a week to a couple a day.
Both cofounders answer support themselves for a customer base in the thousands, and use the volume of repeated requests to spot which features to build.
The founder uses Intercom to reach anyone currently on the RepairDesk site and routes his support team through the same tool.
Partners receive the internal issue number once there is a reproducible test case and a plan to fix it
Sources
- How We Work at PSPDFKit | Peter SteinbergerPeter Steinberger · steipete.me · Backporting · 2019-07-03
- 20 years to overnight success - Fathom AnalyticsPaul Jarvis · usefathom.com · 20 years to overnight success · 2020-06-18
- SaaS lessons shared on the Framework podcast - Fathom AnalyticsPaul Jarvis · usefathom.com · How Fathom creates new features · 2020-07-20
- Turning a Personal Problem into a $100k/mo SaaSUsman Butt · failory.com · What tools & resources do you recommend? · undated
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.
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