How to provide support if I have a day job and I'm going at it solo?
I'm chewing on an idea at the moment; an app for gates communities which would require people in charge of registering visitors to use a tablet. Given that userbase, I'm predicting that I'll need to dedicate a significant amount of time to education, and resolving issues with the usage.
So, first of all, is this as significant as I make it out to be? Or is there another approach that I'm just not seeing?
Second, how have you guys dealt with giving support to your users while you still have your 9-to-5?
Thanks!
It's easy to get stuck at this stage with an idea. Don't worry too much about hypothetical problems that may or may not appear further down the line. At least, don't let it stop you starting on a project you are passionate about.
As for support needs, you set your customers expectations from the beginning.
If you make it clear about when you will collect feedback or when you will fix issues early on then users will know what to expect.
With your first few users during testing, if they aren't even paying customers then you shouldn't feel obliged to provide an instant response.
Of course you will want to have regular contact with your users but you can make it work.
Try and build documentation so that customers know where to go and also it makes it easier for you to outsource support if you wish.
I'll look into providing the service to my own community as a way of testing the waters with how much they actually need from me, and also fine tuning the product so that it teaches on its own.
Also, your first paragraph is the inspiration I needed to actually get started, thanks!
The best position to start a solo business is from a remote job. Simply because most remote companies care less about when you do the work for them. This will give you the opportunity to mix the work. Not saying this is easy though—hard to balance.
If this is not an option, I'd advise against a project/business that needs a lot of support.
This is one of the reasons it is so hard to be a solo founder. I'm not sure there's a good answer to your question.
The more time you spend talking with and listening to potential users during development, the lower your support demand should be. Education should also be a thing which can be done manually/an (part time/freelance?) employee can be trained to do after the first customers and when you are sure you have everything running correctly.
I wouldn't outsource giving support in the early days, although later this is a good idea. Try to find a balance where how do I do this questions are answered by an employee/FAQ/freelancer (and reviewed by yourself later), whereas link X is broken when I'm logged in and do Y Z times bugs are important for you to hear directly.
Depending on your job, employer and seniority, it may be feasible for you to field a support call or two each day without any problems.
Assuming each customer needs urgent (ie within a four hour response time) support once per month (high), then at 40 customers you are still only fielding two support calls per day. By that point you should be earning enough to justify going full or part-time on your project anyway ;)
Perhaps something in there was useful - good luck and let us know how it turns out!
Thank you for taking the time to reply! It is indeed very useful advice.
I'll think more about how to communicate with my potential users with a purpose, in order to ease the product in instead of trying to push it too much.
I like your insight into bringing in support people early, I'll save that idea for when I actually have the need and not a second before.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Thank you for sharing your experience in that role; sheds a light into how important it is to define relevant metrics to measure success.