Posts Tagged ‘cory’
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.
Individuals trying to start a side business may often think that their 9-5 job doesn’t matter as long as the hours and money are right.
However – a complacent attitude toward your full-time job may end up hurting your chances of side business success. It’s important to evaluate the pros and cons of where you’re spending 40+ hours a week and to assess what other full-time jobs could be out there.
Several years ago I started subscribing to Sirius Radio. I’ll admit it – I’m a Howard Stern junkie. I know he’s immature, crude, vile, etc.. but sometimes he can be damn funny. Anyway, I was talking to Cory the other day and he mentioned that he listens to nothing but audio books and podcasts during his commute. He showed me a cool one he’s using on his phone called Pocket Casts, and them proceeded to hook me up with a podcast on BlogCast FM where they talk about blogging, small business endeavors and all sorts of interesting topics. I decided to download the app and subscribe.
The next day as I was pulling out of Chick-fil-A after picking up a horrible breakfast because we had no milk (don’t get me started), I was disappointed to find that Stern was rerunning an episode from earlier in the week. I then remembered the podcast app so I fired it up and started listening to a Srinivas Rao talk to a reasonably successful blogger about his strategies and the like.
When I got to work it was so interesting I actually didn’t want to get out of the car. It turned out the Stern rerun was really a blessing in disguise because it illustrated that for an extra 50 minutes a day I can be somewhat productive or at least I stand a chance of learning something useful.
I know that podcasting has been around for a long time but if you haven’t thought about it lately, you may want to give it a try the next time you are on your way to your 9-5.
