At 8:46 PM -0500 2/18/06, Thom McGrath wrote:
Inquiring about business ethics here really. So opinions away.
Tech support is costly, although at the time I can only offer e-mail
support. I will have each paying customer's e-mail address on file,
and therefore can limit incoming mail to only people who have paid
for the software. If they are using the demo mode, they are limited
to web support. Sales inquires would go to a separate address. I'm
not talking about technical feasibility (I can do that easily), I'm
talking about business ethics.
Thom,
One thing I have found is that our existing customers only
occasionally need to ask any real questions. Ninety percent of our
support e-mail is from people in their trial period. So you may
leave a lot of sales on the table with your policy.
Also, if you use Kagi as your payment service, I can tell you that
what will happen is that people will pay to get the free support, and
then decide later whether or not to keep your software. The amount
of "purchasers" that abuse the Kagi 30 day money-back policy is
astounding. So not only will you be out your processing fee, you
will be out all of your support time with no real way to collect.
That said, we offer the same level of support both pre- and
post-sale. If the customer needs help setting up and I don't provide
it, there's no sale right?
One thing we absolutely do not do any more is offer telephone
support. My customers who miss this avenue can thank Windows users
for this. After hearing my support person struggle with Windows
users asking questions like "how do I unzip this file", and even "how
do I set up my computer to connect to the Internet" for a few months,
I said to hell with that.
Regards,
- Lou Forlini
Software Engineer
System Support Products, Inc.
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
