Posts Tagged ‘apps’
Product support is an afterthought for many app developers, however it should be planned and prioritized before a product ships. Providing good documentation from the start and building automated support mechanisms can end up saving you lots of time, not to mention makes for happy customers which helps your brand.
Cory recently shared an interesting story with me regarding the early days of the Duplicator plugin. When he developed the initial release, he was deluged with support emails . A few provided valuable feedback, but many were simply asking the same questions on product operation. The volume of email quickly became of a distraction and actually impacted his ability to get the first patch out in a timely fashion.
He realized that the product had been released a bit early, before proper product support elements were in place.
Have a FAQ ready to go
The first lesson learned was a result of having a lot of people asking the same questions. He realized it would have helped if he had a live frequently asked questions list published at the same time as the initial app release. This would have allowed customers to handle a lot of the common problems quickly without having to shoot an email to Cory.
Additionally, a live FAQ would have allowed him to continually add new items to the list as people brought up confusing issues and well-known bugs. A few days after release he rectified the situation and published a FAQ.
