I sell B2C software with a subscription of 1.99€ per month. I have 7,000 active users. I get 5-10 emails per day max.
Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests. Except they never came.
> even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time)
Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to answer a more complex email. But since I know that I don't receive more than 5-10 emails, I take the time and this person might recommend my software to other people, because of the great support.
An easy way to mitigate customer support is to have FAQs and lots of written texts on the website. Most people prefer to help themselves I think, because its faster.
Sometimes I wonder if this is a mentality thing. My customers are all Germans. Maybe US customers are faster to send a short email than browsing through FAQ.
Your support metrics look similar to mine - it looks like about 20% of your customers send an email once a year? And up to 20 minutes per email sounds right to me as well. I guess that isn't a flood, but even half an hour of support per day adds up to a month of full-time work per year.
> Maybe US customers are faster to send a short email than browsing through FAQ.
I get some emails where the entirety of the support question is "The program doesn't work. Is it a bug? Please advise." Some customers don't mention which product they're using, or will even send me support enquiries for competitors products.
Not meaning to be ungrateful (I'm lucky to do what I do!), just that I couldn't afford to do it on a $5 one-off app purchase.
> but even half an hour of support per day adds up to a month of full-time work per year.
1. You could repurpose emails and turn them into FAQ content (= small SEO improvements).
2. If I take the time to answer an email for 20 minutes, I just find it intriguing and such an email almost always helps me to improve my expertise a bit.
3. Even if it's a whole month of support per year: So what? This is my job and I get paid good money for it ;)
> "The program doesn't work. Is it a bug? Please advise." Some customers don't mention which product they're using, or will even send me support enquiries for competitors products.
Get aText or TextExpander or something like that, make a predefined template that asks for more information.
While I answer every single email, I try to spend the least amount of time on people who seem a bit...weird in their questions. If people don't take the time to write a good question, I don't take time to provide a good answer. Requesting more information is a good way to annoy them a bit back. Maybe they either clarify what they want or they'll try to help themselves.
> just that I couldn't afford to do it on a $5 one-off app purchase.
Have you thought about turning this into a subscription? If it provides value on a daily basis, people might pay more than you think, let's say $12 per year.
> You could repurpose emails and turn them into FAQ content (= small SEO improvements).
I do that, but it also creates support enquiries for competitors products. I rank well for "how to install Photoshop Plugins", which means I get the emails for how to install my competitors plugins too :) Should be great lead-gen, but I've not found a way to convert those visits into downloads/sales of my own plugins.
> Have you thought about turning this into a subscription?
Sometimes, but some customers specifically said they bought my software because it wasn't a subscription. I'm also charging $20 - $25 per sale now, trying to price for at least one support case per sale.
> Should be great lead-gen, but I've not found a way to convert those visits into downloads/sales of my own plugins
Ah I see. You've got some general advice content and people write to you about it. Since you obviously tracked conversion for that, I see these options:
a) Answer those emails sincerely as a hobby
b) Answer with a template only ("Please write to the creator of that plugin you found, they'd love to help you!")
c) Explain somewhere in the article that you can only provide email support for paying customers, then don't answer
d) Put in the article: "If you need help installing a plugin other than $MY_PLUGIN_NAME, I'm happy to provide support for you for $15 per 15 minutes. Buy customer support now"
Even with "only" 5-10 support emails a day, though, you have to be very organised. I'm guessing you probably just are, and that's why you think that's no big deal.
If you're used to carving out a slice of your day to respond quickly to a batch of such emails, then it's fine. But if you're in a frame of mind where you're primarily worried about something else you really feel you need to get done, it can seem very hard to set that aside and reply to even a single email in any meaningful way.
(But yes, I've also had the experience that charging money does not suddenly make your users any more demanding.)
In my experience, the amount of human touch you need to provide through support, sales, implementation - is more a function of your audience than anything else. Selling to software developers, you can probably get away with low to no touch across the board. Selling to SMBs who aren't all that computer savvy? Their default reaction is going to be to look for a phone number when they have a question. They may not even know what an FAQ is.
Before I charged money for my software, I was afraid of the overwhelming flood of customer support requests. Except they never came.
> even one short email enquiry would wipe out a dozen sales or more (if you put a monetary value your time)
Per email, yes, absolutely. Sometimes I take 20 minutes to answer a more complex email. But since I know that I don't receive more than 5-10 emails, I take the time and this person might recommend my software to other people, because of the great support.
An easy way to mitigate customer support is to have FAQs and lots of written texts on the website. Most people prefer to help themselves I think, because its faster.
Sometimes I wonder if this is a mentality thing. My customers are all Germans. Maybe US customers are faster to send a short email than browsing through FAQ.