It's funny how often software is priced according to the anticipated support burden, but users feel entitled to support regardless of the price. I once worked at a financial analytics software company and our end users were non-technical, but paid about 2K a month for a username and password, and very often the users were kind and apologetic in their support requests. I also have a personal software product that costs $5/mo with a free trial, and many people trialing it are quite impatient and high maintenance. My take-away: if you are setting yourself up for an end-user support role, make sure it's priced accordingly.
users feel entitled to support regardless of the price
Pathological customers are disproportionately attracted to low price points. Your post jives with the experience of literally dozens of companies which have told me the same thing: the more you charge, the better your customer pool will be at everything. They'll read better. They'll have a better understanding of, ahem, engineering reality. They'll be more patient. They'll have less viruses and hard disk failures. They'll be better at using the Googles. etc, etc
It could be possible that when a person spends more for an item or service, they tend to value it more. They may also be more committed to it, whatever that means.
Reminds me of Dan Ariely's (and many other's) behavioral economics research.
It's a bit of a long leap but I've noticed that the clients we do discounts to always end up being really high maintenance, some even destroying their websites. On the flip side, the clients spending big money are always great to work with and generally let us do our thing. They always require less support.
There must be a deeper basis behind this. Some kind of psychology behind pricing. I've noticed it everywhere I turn.
One particulary interesting case was the packaging on Tesco (large supermarket chain the UK) branded toilet paper. It said it was just as strong and soft as Andrex, the leading brand. Andrex is much more expensive but still remains the leading brand!
I've actually been toying with this thought for a while and now it warrants much further investigation.
Good point. My thought is that, the $5 budget apps are actually paid for by the person using it whereas the big budget items (say $2000 software) are paid for (or negotiated) by the indirect purchasing departments. The end users don't actually pay it themselves which could also be part of the psychology as to why they aren't so 'demanding' so to say.
True, but there is another thing. With big deals you normally define support very clear in the contract. With smaller deals companies don't feel the urge to do this.
But it's very simple to say: "This product is cheap because it lacks quick response times for support".
Most customers won't have a problem with that.
I've found this is due to the difference between small-to-medium business and enterprise customers.
Once you pass a certain price point, you are generally dealing with an enterprise. This means 1) they are spending Other People's Money and 2) they are more likely to be accustomed to a professional environment.
I have to be honest and say that this isn't true in the scenario I describe. They're all dentists who own dental practices - the ones we cut deals & make discounts to are the ones who generally give the most pain.
The whole point in offering the discount is destroyed due to the financial cost of the headache involved.
A few years ago we raised our prices substantially and that reduced to near zero the number of nasty pre-sales support requests (we have a demo for download). So yes, higher paying customers are generally nicer. We also had a case similar to the OP where some guy kept emailing us for months because we didn't solve some problem he had even though it wasn't directly related to our product.
I know a few people who used to work for Loot, the free ads paper.
People would call if there was an error in their ad. Companies who had paid for their ads were almost always calm and polite, people who got a free ad for a small value item were sometimes very rude or aggressive.
Comments
It's funny how often software is priced according to the anticipated support burden, but users feel entitled to support regardless of the price. I once worked at a financial analytics software company and our end users were non-technical, but paid about 2K a month for a username and password, and very often the users were kind and apologetic in their support requests. I also have a personal software product that costs $5/mo with a free trial, and many people trialing it are quite impatient and high maintenance. My take-away: if you are setting yourself up for an end-user support role, make sure it's priced accordingly.
users feel entitled to support regardless of the price
Pathological customers are disproportionately attracted to low price points. Your post jives with the experience of literally dozens of companies which have told me the same thing: the more you charge, the better your customer pool will be at everything. They'll read better. They'll have a better understanding of, ahem, engineering reality. They'll be more patient. They'll have less viruses and hard disk failures. They'll be better at using the Googles. etc, etc
It could be possible that when a person spends more for an item or service, they tend to value it more. They may also be more committed to it, whatever that means.
Reminds me of Dan Ariely's (and many other's) behavioral economics research.
It's a bit of a long leap but I've noticed that the clients we do discounts to always end up being really high maintenance, some even destroying their websites. On the flip side, the clients spending big money are always great to work with and generally let us do our thing. They always require less support.
There must be a deeper basis behind this. Some kind of psychology behind pricing. I've noticed it everywhere I turn.
One particulary interesting case was the packaging on Tesco (large supermarket chain the UK) branded toilet paper. It said it was just as strong and soft as Andrex, the leading brand. Andrex is much more expensive but still remains the leading brand!
I've actually been toying with this thought for a while and now it warrants much further investigation.
Good point. My thought is that, the $5 budget apps are actually paid for by the person using it whereas the big budget items (say $2000 software) are paid for (or negotiated) by the indirect purchasing departments. The end users don't actually pay it themselves which could also be part of the psychology as to why they aren't so 'demanding' so to say.
True, but there is another thing. With big deals you normally define support very clear in the contract. With smaller deals companies don't feel the urge to do this.
But it's very simple to say: "This product is cheap because it lacks quick response times for support". Most customers won't have a problem with that.
I've found this is due to the difference between small-to-medium business and enterprise customers.
Once you pass a certain price point, you are generally dealing with an enterprise. This means 1) they are spending Other People's Money and 2) they are more likely to be accustomed to a professional environment.
I have to be honest and say that this isn't true in the scenario I describe. They're all dentists who own dental practices - the ones we cut deals & make discounts to are the ones who generally give the most pain.
The whole point in offering the discount is destroyed due to the financial cost of the headache involved.
A few years ago we raised our prices substantially and that reduced to near zero the number of nasty pre-sales support requests (we have a demo for download). So yes, higher paying customers are generally nicer. We also had a case similar to the OP where some guy kept emailing us for months because we didn't solve some problem he had even though it wasn't directly related to our product.
I know a few people who used to work for Loot, the free ads paper.
People would call if there was an error in their ad. Companies who had paid for their ads were almost always calm and polite, people who got a free ad for a small value item were sometimes very rude or aggressive.
It is weird.