Castro’s Customer Support Lessons
I had an idea when I bought Castro that human support based around actual user experience was an easy differentiator. I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use. I thought if I used my own product every day, read every email and answered it thoughtfully, people would appreciate this, and it would build some degree of loyalty and appreciation.
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However, what I found is this whole thing didn’t work as I thought it would. Sure sometimes we were able to wow customers, particularly when we responded right away with an exact fix for them. But the vast majority of our honest, thoughtful answers were deeply unsatisfactory to users, and it often annoyed them more than anything else.
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Customers email us with confusion about how podcasts work, how the App Store works, how their Mac works, and any number of tangential issues. What tends to happen is the same users do this over and over, and once they find out we answer, the requests get more frequent and more burdensome.
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To the user, any response aside from “Okay, we’re going to build that right now” is meh-to-negative. Various honest responses, such as “I thought about this or tried it in the past and it unfortunately didn’t work very well” are not going to knock their socks off. These just don’t do much in terms of loyalty and rapport.
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Avoiding explanations and specifics tends to get a neutral response and doesn’t suck anyone in or waste too much time. In other words, the best approach for us is what most companies do. Because building loyalty or rapport at the moment something isn’t working and the user is frustrated hasn’t worked. The real positive experience comes when you actually improve the product, so that’s where we’re spending our time.
I have definitely seen all these categories of customer interactions, but I don’t agree with the conclusion. Yes, in the end you want to be improving the product, but I don’t think that’s fully separable from interacting with customers as humans. I’ve found spending time on customer support incredibly valuable for making my products better. Even a lone report of an issue can often lead to a fix and learning something important that has wider implications. It’s also enjoyable and motivational to hear about real people making use of what I’ve built or to turn around someone who started with a negative view. And it seems to help with marketing, too.
I also see a correlation with the apps that I use—the better ones tend to also have good support. That said, I use a podcast app that famously doesn’t offer support. There are different situations, and there’s more than one way to a good product and a successful business.
I do think there’s an art to all this. Not everything can be measured, and there’s more to it than just committing to answering e-mails thoughtfully. You need to set boundaries and steer the interactions to make them productive, efficient, and satisfying for both sides. I’m still learning.
Previously:
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The results of providing good and informative customer support is related to what the product is and who the users are. Podcast listeners (millions of them) are largely bad at computers, some are bad at clicking a mouse, some are bad at telling whether the computer is plugged in. They might be good at scrolling and swiping a touchscreen and little more because for many of them the phone is the only computer they own and they know nothing about dev timelines and feature prioritization and don't care. Very different if the users are dev/software pro users.
Honestly, I don't want a relationship with any company. If I message a company for support, I either want them to tell me how to fix it myself, I'm thinking about the feature wrong, or to fix the problem with their software, I don't particularly care that they are super personable, etc.
I used Castro for a lot of years and need to circle back and try it again, during the instability leading up to the sale, and then during the sale, I switched to Feedbin's client, but it is pretty substandard for actually listening to podcasts.
@gildarts I don’t think “relationship” or “super personable” is what he was getting at, or at least that’s not how I interpreted it. To me, telling you that you’re thinking about a feature wrong would be a good example of something that I think would be useful but where the standard corporate approach would be some vague response that your feedback will be considered, then closing the ticket.
I do personal support. Over 20 years I have implemented most of the features users ask for. Often they just didn't find it.
Sometimes users ask for features I won't implement. I then reply by acknowledging the validity of their request and explain that I cannot fulfill it, either because it's too unique and won't pay off for me or bc it's outside of the app's scope or just because of my limited time.
They accept it. And don't complain. I see that as a win. Taking your customers' needs seriously is key.
Confession: The Castro support replies have been AMAZING since he took over. And that “other” app with no customer support has had enough trouble with performance I gave up.
But I haven’t paid for Castro since buying version 2. Why? I hate subscriptions above a few bucks a year when my needs aren’t really changing and, well, embarrassingly, I got frustrated when the grandfathered enhanced sound unlock for previous purchasers was, let’s say, revoked a couple of years ago.
Irrational? Probably. But I don’t know that anyone is making their buying decision on that feature. Why revoke it? Seems loyalist hostile.
I do have a habit of paying for a month of subscription in December for things I really like and feel guilty for freeloading throughout the year — like SixColors — and should for Castro. It’s good, and his simply reading, much less replying to, my questions have eaten a lot more than $4 of time. But then it doesn’t do transcripts (I’ve read his explanation why it doesn’t, which wasn’t super suasory) and the cheap side of my head says, “Man, it’s got tons of ads and doesn’t even give me table stakes for a podcast player in 2026.”
I think I’ll go do one month now, but the bottom line seems to be it’s tough to be in such a mature market that’s been reasonably Sherlocked… and that Overcast proves doesn’t really appreciate nor require white glove treatment.
This is a great discussion. I agree with you Michael, and disagree with his conclusion. Yes you may not get great responses from everyone, but if you treat all your customers as your worst ones, you get a very impersonal response. Let them rant and rave, and just move on. But you should do both improve your product and provide great customer support. My customers have all been mostly great and patient.
(Side note, no support is a big reason I don't use Overcast. Why would I use something someone doesn't stand behind?)
The original link doesn't work but I think I found a copy. I was interested in the details why the guy thinks that interactions with customers are bad. One problem seems to be the subscription of the app. Another problem is the way the AppStore works. If users do not provide enough information to fix a bug it's always annoying. Users actually want to use the app and most are willing to do at least some testing.
So the guy just doesn't know his users, got frustrated and now provides worse support?
@Beatrix where did you find a copy? The link doesn't work for me and I am interested in reading this.
@gildarts I find Feedbin's podcast client to be a good fit for me, I've been using it for a couple of years. Makes much more sense to me than Overcast does in terms of organizing what I want to listen to.
Good support is a critical component of any small company. Small companies don't have large QA teams, or design resources, or can do user testing, etc. Support is how you learn what your customers pain points actually are. Support should drive some of your development (not all, but some). If you get the same question over and over again, it means you need to rethink how your program works and lead your users to the answer. This is a win for your customers (things are comprehensible) and a win for you (lower support costs).
