simple trick to improve customer relations

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simple trick to improve customer relations

18 Jul 2017

As much as I would like to say otherwise, my apps are not perfect. They have bugs, and they don’t include every feature my users want. So, customer support is important.

Earlier this year, the main way I found out about problems was through negative App Store reviews. Few people took the time to go back to the App Store page, find the developer website, and submit feedback through there – nor should they have. That’s a long, tedious process that isn’t very obvious.

Because I’d prefer they contact me rather than leave a one-star review, I added a button in the app to “Contact Me”. Easy enough. Many users who would otherwise have left reviews about bad bugs with in-app purchases turned instead to me, first.

A few of these users were pretty angry, too. One user whose in-app purchase was not recognized due to a bug in my StoreKit code made it clear, in many more words, that he was going to leave a one-star review, get a refund from Apple, and delete the app.

And that is certainly his prerogative, of course. My job as a developer is to make users happy. If I fail to do that, due to a bug or lack of feature, then it’s the user’s right to be angry.

However, the way the user phrased the email made it sound like he was addressing someone that was part of a big company. But I’m not a big company, I’m a high school student (or I was at the time) who worked on this app in my free time.

I decided to update the app with the following change:

My name is Evan, and I am a student who works on this app part-time. If you have any questions or feedback, please send me an email so I can get back to you ASAP.

I am not a company, and I am not even a full-time developer. If users decide they would prefer a different pitch counter because they only want a pitch counter developed by a real company (???) then they can go ahead and download a different one.

Since this change, I have yet to receive any angry emails from users like the one I mentioned before.

Perhaps I fixed all the bugs, and there are no angry users anymore? Not very likely, I’m afraid 😅

If your users know there’s a human behind the app, they will treat you like a human.