The following is an adapted version of a post I made recently on the Paizo forums. A couple folks were lambasting our customer service over there, with the usual smattering of uninformed folks piling on with conspiracy theories and a few others coming to our defense. I'm posting it here because I believe it's germane to this discussion.
Everyone's definition of what constitutes great customer service is different. It's all a function of an individual's expectations. In just the past few weeks, we've had multiple people posting that our customer service is the best they've ever experienced and others posting that it's horrible. We can't be *that* inconsistent, can we?
The reality is that providing 5-star customer service is simply not possible for a tiny company like us, unless we wanted to significantly increase our prices to finance that service. Our customers have emphatically said they'd prefer we keep the prices down and endure slower response times, so that's what we've done. It's all about finding a balance that works for each business.
To use a restaurant analogy, fast food joints aren't targeting the same clientele as posh restaurants. Nobody expects 5-star service at a fast food joint, and nobody expects assembly-line food in a posh restaurant. There is clearly a place for both to be successful businesses, plus an entire spectrum inbetween.
On the whole, we've garnered a large and loyal customer base over a span of 11 years (approaching 100,000 users). Our business model is almost completely dependent on word-of-mouth advertising, which means that the majority of our users are more than satisfied with our product quality and customer service. We'll never be able to make everyone happy, but we seem to be making the majority of folks happy, and that has translated to a successful business for us.
Using the restaurant analogy, we're not trying to be a fast food restaurant, nor are we trying to be a posh restaurant. We're really more like a Chili's or a Cheesecake Factory - good quality and reasonable service for a moderate price. A customer who expects red carpet treatment from a Chili's is going to be woefully disappointed. That's usually not going to happen because restaurant customers generally base their expectations on how much they are spending.
In an perfect world, the same should apply to software. Cheap software should lower expectations and more expensive software should raise the expectations. Sadly, that's not always the case, and there are those who expect red carpet treatment for a $30 product like Hero Lab. Those folks end up disappointed and are generally not shy about voicing their displeasure.
Is it fair? It really doesn't matter. It's part of the reality of selling to consumers. Dealing with folks who have unrealistic expectations is one of the most miserable parts of this job, since it's never going to be possible to make them happy. On the flipside, there are the rest of you guys who appreciate everything we're developing, and that's arguably the best part of the job.
So it's a double-edged sword. I just wish I didn't have to fall on it quite so often.
