Rob La Gatta's presentation from WordSesh 2013 on Running Support For A Premium WordPress Plugin.

1. Running Support for A Premium
WordPress Plugin
Rob La Gatta / Modern Tribe
rob@tri.be
@roblagatta

2. I'm Rob. I run Quality* for Modern Tribe.
(No, I'm not one of these guys).
* Quality = QA + support!

3. An events framework to help you kick ass

4. Good support…
• Makes existing customers happy &
prospective customers excited
• Fights the rigid bureaucratic machine
• Engages the community, instead of
just preaching to it
• Provides value that can be easily
measured internally &externally
• Is offensive, not defensive

5. Building your team
• Are they happy, helpful, curious &
accountable?
• Where are they located? Does it even
matter for the job they’re doing?
• Do they understand a lifestyle company, &
the work/life balance?
• How do they handle the interview & test
project?
• Is this someone I’d want to spend time with
at our next team-wide retreat?

6. “Stacking the bench”
Positives (+) Negatives (-)
• Patience • Obvious bullshitting
• Strong verbal & written • Poor verbal
communication or a less-
communication skills than-100% command of
• A sense of humor, English
regardless of how dark • No other source of
income
• Thick skin & no
• Lack of experience
semblance of working remotely
defensiveness • Overly granular (or,
• Openness to wearing “paying too much
many hats attention to the wrong
details”)

7. Think like a food truck

8. Being a buddy
• Remember the “Golden Rule”
• Embrace the conflicts that being voice
of the customer causes with your dev
team
• You can be a professional without
being cold & impersonal (use smiley
faces, exclamation points)
• Treat users like a friend…someday,
they might be one

9. Remember…
It’s not a matter of whether or not you
can solve their specific problem…it’s
about whether or not they have a
good experience throughout the
exchange.

10. So you’ve pissed someone off
• Be diplomatic
• Swallow your pride & be liberal with apologies
• Never let your emotions take control
• Take 20 minutes to write a thoughtful, detailed
reply that calmly addresses all their points
• Strategically escalate to defuse a volatile
situation, if needed
• Keep the user on your radar & check in as
needed until you know they’re happy (or at
least calm)

11. Providing support: free vs PRO
The Events Calendar (free) Events Calendar PRO (paid)
• All posts gets a reply within • All posts get a reply within
7-10 days (usually sooner) 24 hours
• Help with bugs; don’t help • Help with bugs,
feature requests, customizations &
customizations & most theme/template
theme/plugin integrations integrations as much as is
practical
EVERYBODY is a customer. Some have paid for
more features & support than others, but you
owe it to everyone to respond professionally,
with enthusiasm & in a reasonable timeframe

12. Curiosities about free vs PRO
• The value provided should be
proportionate to the amount the plugin
costs
• Strategically include links to
PRO/premium support threads when
practical
• Setting expectations of limited support on
dot-org & sticking to those can actually
increase buyers of your premium product
• Reply to the written reviews, even
(especially) the nasty ones

13. The right philosophy?
"I don't care if you pay us $39 or
$390,000. Treat our support team
poorly and you may be asked to take
your money and leave.”
- @byronrode

14. Act nice, get help
“The more respectful and thankful that
you are, the more inclined they will be
to help you out for little or no charge.
Remember you pay NOTHING to use
the plugin, so the least you can pay
the developer is some respect.”
- Wpbeginner.com

15. If you can’t help them…
• Direct them to a competitor who you
know will treat them right
• Be wary about letting your team
provide “additional support” at a cost
they determine
• Keep a customization referral list that is
well-stocked with available
freelancers/shops

16. How do you QA?
• Do devs QA their own work, or each
other?
• Do you have an independent QA
team whose job is exclusively to test
products before release?
• Do you bypass QA altogether, release
& make fixes based on user reports?
…don’t trip, but you’re doing it wrong.

17. Good support teams do QA
• It avoids creating silos
• Creates a more cohesive, less
fragmented experience for the end user
• Expectations on the scope/timeline of a
feature or bug fix can be set more
accurately
• Who knows what the community wants &
whether your changes get them there,
better than the person engaging with
them on a daily basis?

18. An ideal quality process
• Team members each “own” a unique
plugin & are responsible for testing
before release /support after
• Multiple (2+) testers before a major
release
• Implementation of a strict monthly
maintenance release cycle

19. The monthly release cycle
• Week 1: Post-mortem the last release,
refine specs for the next
• Weeks 2-3: Heavy focus on necessary
development work
• Week 4: Complete QA, test all the issues
specific to the release, & do a “full pass”
Release updates on thefirst Mondayof the
month, every month, then start the process
over.

20. Why are monthly releases good
for support?
• They make people happy
• Gives users a reasonable timeframe for
expecting bug fixes
• Makes better use of support resources
• Proves that we’re committed to the
product & that the issues they report
on the forums aren’t being ignored

21. Good outcomes of a monthly
release cycle
• For ourselves, they excite the team by
get everyone from design to QA into a
monthly route with a shared,
attainable end goal
• For the competition, it shows we aren’t
going away anytime soon

22. Other time-saving support hacks
• Provide “how-to’s” for everything: not
just related to your plugin, but on using
the website/forum too
• “Bad documentation is a bug”
• If your forums are on BBPress, install
Pippin Williamson’s Private Replies
plugin
• Strategically hide the contact form to
everyone but a small subset of users

23. That’s it.
Thanks for watching.