CHAPTER 11 Supporting Your Product
easy for us to sit back and complain about users who don’t read, and con-
tinued to deal with the tickets as they came in.
However, this issue meant that a first-time user had a slower start
than we would like, as they had to post a ticket and wait for us to answer,
and we were spending time responding to the same request over and
over again. We made these requests disappear with a simple change to
the messaging on that screen. Rather than just tell the user they had done
something wrong, we told them how to fix it. This meant that our custom-
er could quickly get started with our product rather than needing to wait
for support.
Particularly with a technical product, it will not always be possible to
prevent people getting stuck. What seems obvious to a more technical user
can be baffling to a beginner. So, if you are frequently answering questions
about a specific part of your product, there may be things you can do to
help people with it.
While many of our customers are very used to installing and using
a content management system of some type, perhaps having come from
using WordPress, we have a significant number for whom Perch is the first
CMS they have installed. If your experience of Web development to date
has just been flat HTML files, then any system, no matter how straightfor-
ward, is going to involve learning new concepts. We found that we were
stepping people through the initial stages of using Perch. Once they had
grasped the concepts we often didn’t hear from them again — they just
needed some help to get started.
We reduced the frequency of these requests by creating a set of tutorial
videos. These help the newcomer to Perch through the initial setup and
basic implementation on a website. We have found that these greatly re-
duce the amount of initial handholding we need to do. Having a variety of
support materials will ensure that your customers can learn in a way that
is appropriate for them.