Secretly Awesome Custom Service
When it comes to customer support for premium WordPress themes and plugins (and many other web-based products), there seems to be a pretty standard set of policies shared by most companies:
- No telephone support.
- Little if any direct email support.
- Forums are the primary method of support, sometimes restricted to paid customers.
- Specified hours for support forum responses (usually weekdays only).
- No support for customizations / modifications to their product.
- No guaranteed compatibility / support for other 3rd party software.
- No support for free products.
There are valid and obvious reasons behind these policies. A heavily promoted and popular site will never be able to handle the volume and deploy the resources necessary to offer phone support, free customizations, and other things on this list.
It’s important to spell out these policies clearly on your website so that customers don’t get the wrong idea. They must know what the limitations are going in. Otherwise, you risk making your customers angry and frustrated when they feel they’re not getting what they paid for.
You also don’t want to offer everything on day 1, then slowly cut out those benefits as your customer-base grows. This will only turn off those customers who were with you from the start, who are likely the best promoters of your product/service.
Unofficially Awesome Customer Support
All of that being said… I still offer most if not all of the things on that list. I just don’t make it known on the policy pages of ThemeJam.com. I don’t guarantee these “extras”. But I do offer them to those that inquire.
I respond to every email I receive through ThemeJam. That has included:
- Answering pre-sales questions, sometimes lasting up to a week of back and forth and not resulting in a sale.
- Lengthy customer support for users of the free Gadget theme (which officially doesn’t come with support).
- Help with theme installation and general WordPress questions.
- Customer support for paid themes, despite the fact we have a dedicated forum for this.
Why?
I just can’t help myself 
No, really. Why not? These extra support requests are opportunities to develop real relationships with potential customers. If the customer comes away with a surprisingly positive experience, it increases the chances of them recommending ThemeJam products to their network (either through blogging, twitter, or simple word of mouth).
As I’ve said in the past, the key to success is to build a strong network of referrals. In that post, I was talking about freelancing. But it’s the same thing when building a customer-base for your products. I’d say my biggest marketing goal for ThemeJam would be to boost word-of-mouth sales. This is probably something I won’t be able to accurately measure, but still well-worth the effort.
Once again, I’m capitalizing on the fact that I’m still a small guy in a crowded marketplace. The fact that my customer-base is still relatively small means I have the time and resources available to provide exceptional customer support that exceeds expectations and goes above and beyond what most companies offer. This comes back to the idea that scaling your business can work both ways.
Over to you
Your thoughts? I’m interested to hear about your experiences – positive and negative – dealing with customer support for online products.
Interesting perspective. Most of the time you hear about how you should completely ignore non-paying customers for free theme support and whatnot, or why you shouldn’t support general WordPress issues. And if you want customization, that can be handled by one of the certified theme customizers for an additional fee.
While I understand why (especially for already established companies who probably don’t care if they miss out on a potential new customer or two), I think it can be very helpful to newer companies to build their client base.
You never know if that guy who asked a simple WP question that you answered could turn into a loyal customer later on down the road.
Thanks for your comment Leland
That’s exactly my thinking. A lot of questions have very simple answers, so why ignore them? For someone who’s working on the web all day every day, it’s really not hard for me to fire off an extra few emails or forum posts and provide that extra help. I don’t believe in holding back because it’s not part of the “business model”. If I have the time – which as a new company, I often do – then I try my best to go above and beyond.