Strategies for scaling & automating after ~ 1 year of relative success? (1k customers, $9k/MRR)
I run some small SaaS businesses that I've, until now, managed on my own as sole developer, customer support guy, marketer, etc.
I recently hired a customer support guy that is an absolute gem and helps a ton, probably saves me 2 hours a day on average.
Only issue with him is that... he is not me. What I mean by that is there are relatively many questions he can't handle on a daily basis and needs to send to me. These are tech specific questions; extremely custom questions that I can't expect him to know; or stuff about custom implementations, API integrations, etc. Some days I have 5-6 of these emails to respond to, which in some cases can take a good chunk of my day. (For reference - other days there are 0 emails for me to reply in, which is great)
My current struggle is I still find myself spending a good chunk of my day sorting out bugs, answering email, or just stuck in a non 'flow' state where I just don't get anything done.
The businesses are growing; and I have so many ideas and feature ideas for them that I know will be hits, but I just don't have the time to implement them.
The obvious solution here is to hire another developer; but I've struggled to find someone familiar with my niche of platform and tech stack. I'm also at that weird zone where I can technically afford to hire someone; but on the personal finance side of things, I could use every dollar at the moment, so it's a bit tough to give that up to bring someone on board.
I'm wondering what others have done to get over this hump.
I am beyond MVP, I have an established product with customers, but not at the $$ mark that allows me to confidently hire someone else to help out.
It is an incredibly privileged position to be in, very happy where things are. But it's tough as some weeks go by, and I don't feel productive at all, just fixing small bugs, answering emails and what not.
I feel like I have 3-4 hours max of proper productive time each day; and at the moment I can spend 2-3 of those doing relatively mundane tasks, when I would prefer to be coding new features in that time.
I’m a step behind you - 5k ARR and not drowning in support queries yet; but I have the exact fears you do: “If this keeps growing, how am I ever going to get out of giving (specialized) support?”
While I don’t have it solved, and I’m curious what other responses you’ll get, here’s where I have started:
hope this helps! btw I’m curious, where/how did you hire your support person?
Fantastic points.
I feel like when I started out, I was writing articles for every single query I received; but for some reason I have stopped doing that. I guess in my mind I 'covered the bases' and just got lazy after that point.
Absolutely agree with a more strict release schedule / stricter quality control. At the beginning I would release features and launch free willy but recently I have been slowing it down. This is a great point though, thanks for that.
I have been considering spinning something like this up (community forum). I would want to make it as entry friendly as possible, I have been considering using https://circle.so/ for a forum as I have heard some great stuff about it recently. My worry is the effort put into it, and not knowing if people would actually use it. Time to talk to some more customers :)
My support guy was off of Upwork (since moved off of it, though). He had experience in my world (Shopify apps) and was a hit from the start. He's based in India and works EST hours for me which is a godsend.
Thanks so much for these points, really helpful and hope you can avoid this little bump in the road when you get there!
I’ve been looking at circle too! Looks really neat.
I guess I should have mentioned; if I was doing it differently today, I’d probably just suck it up and make a facebook group. Zero maintenance and, at least for my market (consumer), I think more of my customers would use it
Despite how easy the Discourse SSO integration is — and how I can do cool things like blend recent posts into my app — I think I’d get way more engagement going where people are “already” logging in.
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I'm in the same boat (albeit I hit the same level, than plateaued and have been for quite some time, so maybe this advice isn't that great!) so I wanted to leave my own approaches. These are in addition to what @spikeytown said, which were good points.
Once a month, or every other month, ask support to provide recurring issues, or themes. This doesn't need to be a lot of work because most important things will be top of mind anyway.
Expose information within the product to make it easier for both support and customers to fix themselves. Even "highly technical" issues can be exposed in a user friendly way, e.g. with suggestions "try this, try that".
Record errors so you get to hear about them before you even receive an email (a lot / most people just give up and don't bother sending the email at all).
Build tests into analytics to record whether expected steps are taking place. Think of these as metrics you want your business to sit within. E.g. if sign ups have plummeted maybe you introduced an issue in the sign up page.
In addition, I think some things like "custom implementations, API integrations" are just business development and best handled by you anyway. Unless they are so common as to be spam, and support can then be instructed to ignore or reply with a copy and paste.
A final thought is a pre-emptive one: strive for simplicity. The more you build, the more you have to maintain. The more you have to maintain, the more of your time that will take, and before you know it that 3-4 hours you currently have will be even less.
Great points, thank you for sharing!
I definitely agree. This reminds me of one other suggestion/question for OP: Are you keeping different qualities-of-service for different types of "requires you" inbound? Your challenge has been these sorts of special responses really bust into your flow time. So do you have to deal with them as they come in, or can you batch them up?
When you're hungry for customers, it's probably your instinct to respond ASAP to anything that comes in. "A customer!!". And sometimes that can be an impressive advantage. But for every inbound I've responded to quickly which turned into paying customer, I've had just as many that ghost or never respond. Suggesting to me that a very fast response time isn't always essential.
Certainly, you need to respond asap to escalations from your tier 1 support regarding something you broke, or an unhappy existing customer. But probably few others expect or need an immediate response; try constraining the time you give these and see if it helps.
Thanks so much for chiming in here.
These are all great points and I think the general idea I'm getting here is I should work towards being more pro-active, as well as better communicating and showing customers how they can resolve things themselves, to an extent.
Simplicity is a good one :) I, as many others, get a little ambitious sometimes. Good to step back occasionally.
Thanks!
I'm also struggling exactly with what you described! I'm a Shopify app developer too.
Many great suggestions have been already posted in the other comments. In fact, this is the kind of post that's worth checking the IH community for.
Another solution that I'm considering is to sell my existing apps. Have you thought about such a way out?
Hey! Great to hear I'm not the only one :)
I've considered it for my one app that is a bit on the backpedal now, and have received some interest; but haven't advanced anything in terms of talking price and what not.
Send me an email, if you'd like
patrick (at) bolle (dot) co
we can chat and have a little Shopify indiehackers group!
Sure, I'd love to chat about Shopify apps development! I'm going to send you an email.
@patrickbolle thanks for posting this - I'm also a step behind you (~4k MRR) and am in the Shopify world as well. You really vocalize all of my concerns / fears as a solo tech founder / developer who is continuing to grow and also am finding myself getting stuck in molasses during the week and shipping much more slowly. I'd love to connect and chat if you're open to it, I'll send you an email separately!
Hey! Sure, send me an note.
patrick (at) bolle (dot) co
Good to hear from other Shopify devs :)