As a solo developer, I decided to offer phone support (2017)
I offer phone support for a niche accounting app (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quailhq.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quailhq.com</a>), and everything in this article rings 112% true to me -- but especially this:<p>&gt; ...all sorts of people call you, and I’ve really learned a lot by talking with users directly on the phone.<p>Sometimes users call me because they want to report a bug, or they&#x27;ve forgotten their email address. Sometimes they want business advice (!), or they have a niche feature they want to request.<p>&gt; This may be a virtue of the Japanese, but, basically, everyone who calls is civil and polite.<p>Hahahaha. Haha. Hah. Ahem. The biggest surprise to me when I started offering support (first email, and then later by phone) is how _aggressive_ people can be. My app has two classes of users -- one free, one paid -- and the paying users are almost invariably polite and efficient while the free users can be really quite...hard to help. &quot;YOUR SHITS BROKE FIX ASAP&quot; is my favorite password reset request, etc.<p>All of my users are American (or Australian), which might have something to do with it. Happily, once you break through that aggressive exterior and people realize you&#x27;re just a person trying to help them out they almost invariably do a 180 and become helpful and polite, and we get whatever it was straightened out together.<p>It&#x27;s almost like there&#x27;s something cultural happening in America that&#x27;s making everyone assume the worst when interacting with people they don&#x27;t know...