Straight wisdom. Filing this one away for safe keeping. Totally reminds me how Atlassian did a big redesign of JIRA and despite warning in advance the redesign was for a redesign sake and I listed to them several ways it actually made the product worse to use. I really did hate them for that.
3
Good article Amy. Would love to hear your thoughts on handling toxic customers while balancing the points you made here.
2
I've been thinking about just that topic lately! But in the mean time, here are a couple essays I wrote that are sorta about that (but not as tight as the one above):
(note: Don't respond to customer hate in public unless you're An Internet personality like me; I'm doing it to show my students how it's done because I want to support their sanity… and I don't name & shame paying customers EVER.)
For what it's worth, I am a proponent of firing customers.
If the product will really not help them and/or they're way too needy, I usually recommend they try something else and then say (kindly) that I'm unable to help them with future support. That gets them to fire themselves.
If they are crude, mean, or nasty, or disruptive — I will refund their money (in the case of an infoproduct) and tell them, okay, I've refunded your money and we're done here. In the case of SaaS, I will tell them we won't be able to help them any further and I've refunded their last payment, please migrate their data off and find another solution… and just send their emails to spam after that.
3
+1,000,000 on firing customers.
I’ve only fired two in my life: once at a post production company I ran, and once at Endcrawl. In both cases they were abusive to my employees.
And in both cases we all breathed a huge sigh of relief the moment the customer was fired.
Now there is such a thing as giving the excitable types a strike or two. Some customers will calm way down if you (1) respond with a thoughtful and professional tone and (2) give them time to cool off. Sandbag that reply a few hours. This gives them enough time to feel embarrassed about hitting send.
But: if they keep up the abuse, toss them politely and firmly overboard.
1
If someone is just heated and not abusive, I'll give them a chance to cool down. But nope, no strikes for abuse! But, that said, I fire customers for all kinds of reasons. If they suck up more support cost than they create, for an extended period of time, I like them to go do that to someone else who has a bigger budget than we do.
1
Great advice Amy. I’ve felt the same and dealt with customers similarly. Sometimes customers seem to latch onto the product when it isn’t the right product except for their budget. Which is where raising prices come in... but that’s another topic altogether.
2
Weirdly nothing you can do will stop people from randomly buying your product at almost any price point. Every launch for 30x500, we have at least one person who buys without reading any of the details, like, they somehow think it's about getting VC funding. Not even a joke. At $1999 you'd expect a little more attention! hehe. Just annoying to give refunds but of course that's our policy.
3
Great list here Amy, thanks for sharing!
I am especially fascinated by how people can complain about any change but get over it soon enough. I'm talking good changes not bad ones ;)
PS: Sadly gifs don't work here yet haha
1
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense:
NOBODY likes change… unless they're the ones instigating it. Any change to a design will be jarring… folks will have to learn some new muscle memories… it'll look different and surprising and they'll have to start paying conscious attention to something they were able to "background" and just get shit done right up to 5 minutes ago. It's inefficient!
(That's why all the techniques I laid out will drastically cut down - but not eliminate - the hate.)
But, once they get their muscle memories back and start tuning out the design elements again, it will (if you did your job) just be better.
If you came home and suddenly all your furniture was rearranged, you'd be pissed ;) Even if the layout was better.
1
Yes, totally agree, I'm fascinated by it because it's a common flaw of human psychology plus hundreds of other biases we have :)
1
It's not a flaw, it's totally rational.
2
don't forget: sending emails with noreply@mail.com reply email. That's a great way to show disdain for your customers.
2
Good one. That goes with sociopathic communication in general. Such a big "FU."
1
Not sure where this would go (or if it's my #10), but any kind of action that shows a lack of respect for security (before a hack or data loss).
For instance, when I have a login issue and the support person sends me a cleartext password via email, I know the SaaS provider doesn't care about security that much.
1
Awesome list!
Data breach is the big one, especially startups tend not to take security seriously.
Thanks for the article!
2
Would you believe I actually made my list in a note before the FB thing? Ha! I was thinking of all the OTHER data breaches, and also when Larry Halff's Mag.nol.ia bookmarking service which never recovered from data loss…
Straight wisdom. Filing this one away for safe keeping. Totally reminds me how Atlassian did a big redesign of JIRA and despite warning in advance the redesign was for a redesign sake and I listed to them several ways it actually made the product worse to use. I really did hate them for that.
Good article Amy. Would love to hear your thoughts on handling toxic customers while balancing the points you made here.
I've been thinking about just that topic lately! But in the mean time, here are a couple essays I wrote that are sorta about that (but not as tight as the one above):
https://stackingthebricks.com/how-to-deal-with-haters/
(note: Don't respond to customer hate in public unless you're An Internet personality like me; I'm doing it to show my students how it's done because I want to support their sanity… and I don't name & shame paying customers EVER.)
https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-ignore-customers/
https://stackingthebricks.com/vaccinate-yourself-against-crappy-customer-feedback/
For what it's worth, I am a proponent of firing customers.
If the product will really not help them and/or they're way too needy, I usually recommend they try something else and then say (kindly) that I'm unable to help them with future support. That gets them to fire themselves.
If they are crude, mean, or nasty, or disruptive — I will refund their money (in the case of an infoproduct) and tell them, okay, I've refunded your money and we're done here. In the case of SaaS, I will tell them we won't be able to help them any further and I've refunded their last payment, please migrate their data off and find another solution… and just send their emails to spam after that.
+1,000,000 on firing customers.
I’ve only fired two in my life: once at a post production company I ran, and once at Endcrawl. In both cases they were abusive to my employees.
And in both cases we all breathed a huge sigh of relief the moment the customer was fired.
Now there is such a thing as giving the excitable types a strike or two. Some customers will calm way down if you (1) respond with a thoughtful and professional tone and (2) give them time to cool off. Sandbag that reply a few hours. This gives them enough time to feel embarrassed about hitting send.
But: if they keep up the abuse, toss them politely and firmly overboard.
If someone is just heated and not abusive, I'll give them a chance to cool down. But nope, no strikes for abuse! But, that said, I fire customers for all kinds of reasons. If they suck up more support cost than they create, for an extended period of time, I like them to go do that to someone else who has a bigger budget than we do.
Great advice Amy. I’ve felt the same and dealt with customers similarly. Sometimes customers seem to latch onto the product when it isn’t the right product except for their budget. Which is where raising prices come in... but that’s another topic altogether.
Weirdly nothing you can do will stop people from randomly buying your product at almost any price point. Every launch for 30x500, we have at least one person who buys without reading any of the details, like, they somehow think it's about getting VC funding. Not even a joke. At $1999 you'd expect a little more attention! hehe. Just annoying to give refunds but of course that's our policy.
Great list here Amy, thanks for sharing!
I am especially fascinated by how people can complain about any change but get over it soon enough. I'm talking good changes not bad ones ;)
PS: Sadly gifs don't work here yet haha
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense:
NOBODY likes change… unless they're the ones instigating it. Any change to a design will be jarring… folks will have to learn some new muscle memories… it'll look different and surprising and they'll have to start paying conscious attention to something they were able to "background" and just get shit done right up to 5 minutes ago. It's inefficient!
(That's why all the techniques I laid out will drastically cut down - but not eliminate - the hate.)
But, once they get their muscle memories back and start tuning out the design elements again, it will (if you did your job) just be better.
If you came home and suddenly all your furniture was rearranged, you'd be pissed ;) Even if the layout was better.
Yes, totally agree, I'm fascinated by it because it's a common flaw of human psychology plus hundreds of other biases we have :)
It's not a flaw, it's totally rational.
don't forget: sending emails with noreply@mail.com reply email. That's a great way to show disdain for your customers.
Good one. That goes with sociopathic communication in general. Such a big "FU."
Not sure where this would go (or if it's my #10), but any kind of action that shows a lack of respect for security (before a hack or data loss).
For instance, when I have a login issue and the support person sends me a cleartext password via email, I know the SaaS provider doesn't care about security that much.
Awesome list!
Data breach is the big one, especially startups tend not to take security seriously.
Thanks for the article!
Would you believe I actually made my list in a note before the FB thing? Ha! I was thinking of all the OTHER data breaches, and also when Larry Halff's Mag.nol.ia bookmarking service which never recovered from data loss…