This page describes some of the poor decisions I have made.
For the first few years of business, Blot asked its customers to pay once a year. This had the following benefits:
Charging monthly reduces the commitment involved, and although it's hard to know if this is mere correlation, the number of customers increased when I made the switch. It makes sense to me that more people are willing to take the plunge when the initial commitment required is 30 days. I also got far fewer requests for refunds – I always issue refunds when asked, but it takes time to do this, and increases the cost of support.
Initially I only showed the price of the service on the sign-up page.
Adding additional payment methods immediately increased Blot's revenue.
Asking the customer to provide information that is easy to look up
I often find myself asking the customer information that I could look up with a little effort (what's the URL to your site? which blog post are you having that issue with?). Responding with even a single question back makes it much more likely the customer will lose interest in the issue, which sometimes feels like solving the problem, but really isn't.
Taking too long to respond
When the customer's inquiry involves a bug whose solution is easy, I found myself waiting to fix the bug before responding to the customer. The proper way to handle things is first to respond saying I am fixing the problem, then follow up with a response when the problem is fixed, rather than leave the customer in the dark until the problem is fixed.
Avoiding responsibility for mistakes
When a bad bug in our product affects a customer, I found it easy to use language which seperated myself from the bug. I find it annoying when people fail in their job and don't take responsibility for it. I don't want to do that myself, although it is tempting.
Mistyping the customer's name
I have made too many errors transcribing a customer's name from memory. I now copy and paste the name to avoid these mistakes.
Constantly checking my support inbox
I often find myself aimlessly refreshing the inbox for supoprt requests when I should be working. I also find myself distracted by a new support