Indie developer started phone tech support, and that's what happened

Around February of this year, I began to provide telephone technical support for the Taxnote application. I didn’t do this before, because the thought itself made me nervous.

I decided that I could finish at any time if the case was too complicated; but by now I have been continuing to do this for more than six months, so I’ll tell you about my experience.

I indicated the phone number only in the help section of the Japanese version of the site, because I myself live in Japan and this is a Japanese number. Maybe in the future I will try to indicate the phone in the English version, if it works with some international telephone service like Skype.

How often do they call?

At the moment, my number is recorded in the help sections of the Taxnote accounting application and the recently released Voicepaper speech synthesizer .
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For example, if you click Help in the Taxnote screen on the settings screen, the "Request by phone" button will appear directly on top. In other words, everything is done in such a way that those who go there will immediately realize that they can contact us by phone.

By the way, the application has few downloads, so even one call is not received every day. Some days they call twice, but this is also a bit, so now the calls do not burden me much. Now, if they called constantly, this could be a problem.

However, if you have been doing this for more than six months, a variety of people call you, and you really learn a lot in these conversations with users directly by phone.

Most users are polite

Maybe this is the quality of the Japanese, but almost all the callers behave in a civilized and polite manner. Often the conversation begins like this: “I don’t want to disturb you in any way, but there is one question that I would ask ...” and I answer something like “Yes, of course, of course ...”.

I think this is happening, because I am alone engaged in my application, and this is emotionally different from the call to the support service of a large company. Callers probably want to be helpful.

But there is another side to the medal, because they subconsciously think: “Is everything OK with this application? It seems that his development can be abandoned, whether to use it further? ”. In the case of a large company, such thoughts do not arise. It is difficult to say which option is better in this regard.

Oh, yes, everyone is very kind, especially the older people who are unfamiliar with IT in general, not to mention Taxnote, are very grateful. When I read the reviews, it seemed that gratitude for the technical support service was just a way to motivate a lonely application developer, but when I heard it directly on the phone, I was ten times happier.

An elderly lady once said with passion on the phone: “I am a physical therapist, and for me, drawing up a tax return used to be quite difficult. But thanks to the application it has become much, much easier. I think this is an excellent application. Thank you so much! ”To be honest, I shed a tear and almost wept.

You can identify critical parts of your product.

Of course, when a major problem arises, you have to answer angry calls. At such moments I sincerely apologize, but such conversations really fill you with the determination to correct the problem.

In fact, if we are talking about major problems, then telephone technical support helps to realize the fact that the incomprehensible behavior of the program and messages is a more common cause of calls than bugs (if the program crashes due to bugs, it is easy to see in the logs, and no one reports such problems on the phone).

At such times, your priorities change. You used to say to the user: “Well, this is close by, it may be difficult to understand,” and now: “No, you really need to make a clearer message explaining that in no case should there be any misunderstandings ...”.

In the last article, I wrote how much easier it is to understand the problem or to debug when talking on the phone, and not through text messages. You hear from the client more detailed circumstances, but mainly emotions that express the urgency of the problem.

For example, you always have a long to-do list, such as developing new features and fixing bugs. But it is always important to prioritize what to do first. At such times, you are guided by statistics from the application (for example, figures from the logs after program crashes), but also calls to technical support.

You make a decision on the basis of both quantitative criteria from statistics and qualitative criteria from communication with people. But if you add phone support, the quality criterion dramatically increases your weight. As you might guess, a deliberate call requires a certain amount of effort from a person, and a conversation with a user helps you understand critical points of his problem, such as “It worries me” or “I don’t understand it”.

You learn to listen better

Competently listening to the user's opinion is a really difficult skill if you are not a UX professional.

First, you need to carefully listen to his words, and then pick up the right words for an answer, constantly analyzing in your head during the conversation how much the user understands IT or the application.

When you on your wave explain something to a user who is not well versed in IT, you get the following questions:

“What is iOS?” Or “What is iTunes?”

The user thinks that you are a computer fanatic, who owns incomprehensible terminology, so exhausted, he may well say:

"Oh, I see ... I understand ..." (even if I myself understood a little ...)

and end the conversation.

By the way, as for standard phrases, I usually start a conversation like this:

“I would like to start an explanation with a working application; can you open the app and talk on the phone at the same time? ”

If you explain to the user how the speakerphone on the iPhone works, then it will be easier for him: we can talk and go through the program together.

However, telephone technical support usually has to talk to people who are not too familiar with IT. Although I honestly try to solve their specific problem, sometimes I have to admit defeat.

“No, no, it's normal that you are not giving details; can you explain at least in general terms? ”

What you can get an answer:

"Oh, I'm sorry ... Well, you see ..."

That's how I would have done in a hurry.

So you first need to understand how familiar the user is with IT and applications and how ready he is to listen to your explanations. However, it is impolite to ask such a question directly. So if he does not voluntarily tell about the level of his training, it remains only to assume.

And I do it subconsciously, and then I forget. If you do not watch carefully for yourself, you can get into a situation where you start talking and talking endlessly.

For example, once when a conversation begins like this:

“I don't understand this part here ...”

I arbitrarily decided in my head:

"And, of course, this situation often occurs"

and suddenly interrupt the person:

“First, it is also done like this, and then this, you press there, and do the following, so it becomes like this. And when you do this, everything becomes as follows, and so on and so forth. ”

without properly understanding the user's circumstances.

So by the end of the speech, I realize that he has some other problem, and I miscalculated.

Therefore, you should be careful not to talk too much at the very beginning of the conversation, otherwise the situation will become more complicated.

Sometimes there is a situation where, even after leading questions, I don’t understand what the user is worried about or what he really wants to ask, then I try to check again:

“You want to do this and that this way, but you don’t understand this part too much. I understand correctly?"

If you do this, you can change your point of view and explain something more thoroughly and in detail. This happens if the user is not too clearly communicating the essence of the problem, so I often use a similar strategy. I found this during technical support in the chat, but I think this method is well suited for a telephone conversation.

When it comes to telephone technical support, the most difficult thing here is that they can call you unexpectedly at any time - unlike the chat room, where you answer at a convenient time. Therefore, I cannot unconditionally recommend it, but I wanted to publish it as a guideline for those who are interested.

I think that the biggest benefit here is an emotional plan.

Application development inevitably ties you to a computer: every day you knock on your keyboard while sitting in front of the monitor. At the same time, you can see the results of your work only in the form of numbers. So when you talk directly with users, you can feel: “Here is a pancake, maybe I am doing something for this world. Life is really good. ”