I noticed a similar pattern in my business (I run an appointment scheduling web site). An additional insight was that when you provide a quick reply to the "dummies" they will start asking even more questions instead of trying to find stuff out themselves.
Here's what works for me: on the second "silly" support request they send I put them in a "cool down" queue that gets answered a day later. If they keep asking simple questions they move into the two day wait queue. (Obviously, this only works if your support is by email.)
I worked as a consultant for a company once where they would go even one step further and would actively encourage customers that used too much customer support to switch to another provider. The trick is doing this in such a way that the customer does not realize he's being told to leave lest you get a bad reputation. I'm not going to divulge all my trade secrets here, but I've found a way to do something similar for my business, perhaps you can think of one for yours too.
I don't think managing expectations is really a trade secret.
A customer losing strategy is opposite to most startup who are looking to gain customers. It's a good problem to have and a sign of headaches that need to be managed.
If you could share a bit more on how you help the customer realize they might want to move, most startups are trying hard enough to acquire customers, not lose them.
I'm not really trying to be secretive but there are several details about my business you would need to know to understand my specific "selective denial" method (as strategy consultants call it). But the general gist is this:
Many startups are so desperate to find customers that they are even holding on to the ones that cost too much support. (Note that in a startup support cost often takes away valuable time from the founders and thus is more an "opportunity" cost than a monetary cost, they should have spent that time growing the business with more valuable customers).
I chose to do only e-mail support because it self-selects out a type of customer that wants to use the phone (also phone support scales poorly, especially when expanding internationally). There are ways you can encourage the "dummy" user to desire phone support, and then gently point out that there are _other_ providers that have that. If you do this properly the dummy client will actually feel they've had good customer service (and you could argue that they have, we just weren't meant for each other) and your over eager competition gets stuck with the dummies.
Edit: I thought I should mention, for a startup it can often be unclear which customer is/will be valuable and you can learn a lot from the "wrong" ones, so be careful with "selective denial" unless you've run the numbers and are sure what you are doing
Comments
I noticed a similar pattern in my business (I run an appointment scheduling web site). An additional insight was that when you provide a quick reply to the "dummies" they will start asking even more questions instead of trying to find stuff out themselves.
Here's what works for me: on the second "silly" support request they send I put them in a "cool down" queue that gets answered a day later. If they keep asking simple questions they move into the two day wait queue. (Obviously, this only works if your support is by email.)
I worked as a consultant for a company once where they would go even one step further and would actively encourage customers that used too much customer support to switch to another provider. The trick is doing this in such a way that the customer does not realize he's being told to leave lest you get a bad reputation. I'm not going to divulge all my trade secrets here, but I've found a way to do something similar for my business, perhaps you can think of one for yours too.
I don't think managing expectations is really a trade secret.
A customer losing strategy is opposite to most startup who are looking to gain customers. It's a good problem to have and a sign of headaches that need to be managed.
If you could share a bit more on how you help the customer realize they might want to move, most startups are trying hard enough to acquire customers, not lose them.
I'm not really trying to be secretive but there are several details about my business you would need to know to understand my specific "selective denial" method (as strategy consultants call it). But the general gist is this:
Many startups are so desperate to find customers that they are even holding on to the ones that cost too much support. (Note that in a startup support cost often takes away valuable time from the founders and thus is more an "opportunity" cost than a monetary cost, they should have spent that time growing the business with more valuable customers).
I chose to do only e-mail support because it self-selects out a type of customer that wants to use the phone (also phone support scales poorly, especially when expanding internationally). There are ways you can encourage the "dummy" user to desire phone support, and then gently point out that there are _other_ providers that have that. If you do this properly the dummy client will actually feel they've had good customer service (and you could argue that they have, we just weren't meant for each other) and your over eager competition gets stuck with the dummies.
Edit: I thought I should mention, for a startup it can often be unclear which customer is/will be valuable and you can learn a lot from the "wrong" ones, so be careful with "selective denial" unless you've run the numbers and are sure what you are doing