I’ve been selling software via internet for quite some time, but only started getting serious about it earlier this year. I finally registered a company, and in May I quit my day job and went indie full time.

Since then things have been picking up, as they usually do when you start devoting yourself 100% to a venture. With increased sales comes increased user support, and there is no help desk to absorb it — in a one-man shop, you are the help desk.

Over the last few months I’ve developed a system of sorts to help reduce the time I spend lending support, so I can spend more of it actually developing software. I’ve christened the system ‘123 Support’, and it goes like this...

1. 1)If you receive a support request that you have never had before, ie, it is the first time you have ever seen that type of request, you simply respond with a custom email to the user and try to resolve the issue.
   

2. 2)If you receive a particular type of support request a second time, you create a template response in order to have that issue automated in future.
   

3. 3)If you get a particular type of request three or more times, it’s time to consider a UI change. You should think about changes to the design of the app which could alleviate the problem users are experiencing.
   

Now these stages are not quite as strict as I make out above: you might have custom responses 5 times before creating an automated response, and after 10 requests consider a UI change. The point is not the exact number of requests, more that there are 3 different stages to consider.

Let’s consider them in a bit more detail. Custom responses are fine, and inevitable for unique requests, but if you find yourself retyping the same information over and over, it’s time to automate things.

Automation in this context is a very loose term. It could be that you add information to your FAQ, for example. It could be that you come up with a standard piece of text for an email response. Whatever seems appropriate.

My approach to automating responses is to use TextExpander. This is a nifty little tool that allows you to create macros which get replaced with boilerplate when you enter them in any text field. I don’t use a fully automated email response system, because that can come across as cold, and not endearing to your customers. Instead I personalize parts of the email, and use TextExpander to add useful information throughout.

For example, I might enter “Hi Bob” on the keyboard. Then I might enter “ssorry”, which would be expanded by TextExpander into “Sorry to hear you are having trouble with our product”. Then perhaps “bbackup”, which would be expanded to “The best way to backup your library is ...”, and so forth. Lastly, I might enter “kkind”, which TextExpander would turn into “Please contact me if you have any further problems. Kind regards, Drew”. You get the idea.

This approach is both personal, and saves you an enormous amount of time and typing. I highly recommend giving TextExpander a go.

The third phase, UI redesign, is more extreme because it may require big changes to your product. It’s not always possible to do in the short term, and you may find yourself relying on step 2 for longer than you would like, but any time you get a lot of questions about a particular piece of functionality, it probably needs a redesign. Perhaps a complete redesign, perhaps only some contextual help or rewording. But somethings gotta change at some point in the future.