So now it's some 15 years later, and how are things? I'm no closer to being rich, but I'm still maki

Dealing with customers can quite often be a pain for many companies and other people who offer goods and services that require some support from time to time. When offering a free service, the barrier for new customers is eliminated and you can get a whole lot of cranky free airline flights people when the service is down or not operating to expectations. So what happens when a free user turns into a paid user? Will those people become even more entitled and become even more upset when downtime happens? Actually, it could very well be the opposite.
When I finally free airline flights flipped the switch to add paid subscriptions to Obsidian Portal , I was terrified of the coming support free airline flights nightmare. I reasoned that if people were angry and demanding when it was free, they would be infinitely more angry and demanding free airline flights after they had paid. Instead, what I quickly learned was that the paying subscribers were vastly more polite, understanding, and patient than the free users.
So why exactly did this happen? Why did these customers, who decided to pay money, suddenly become more polite in their interactions with this developer? free airline flights Micah offers what he feels is the best explanation for this change.
My customers don t pay me in order to buy the right to yell at me. Most of them don t care at all who I am. They pay money because my service addresses a pain point in their lives. They re so happy at how well it addresses the pain point that they gladly free airline flights get out their wallets and fork over payment. If there s an interruption in the service, free airline flights they aren t interested in pointing fingers and assigning blame. They just want the service back. If service interruptions or bugs are the norm, they may get angry, but the point is that they don t get extra angry just because they paid.
When people find software free airline flights or any other service that addresses their needs, they will gladly pay for it and be happy about it. This is something we have addressed in the past on numerous occasions. This is what makes Valve s Steam platform so successful in the games industry. This idea is what leads us to shake our heads at the boondoggles that the movie and music industries throw out there. It is all about identifying a need in the marketplace and offering a service that is convenient and actually meets that need.
Of course this is not going to be true for 100% of users who do pay. There are still plenty of people out there who seek an opportunity to complain. The key is to not be afraid of putting yourself out there.
What I am suggesting is that you relax any fear you have about being beholden to them because they paid you. Asking for payment does not fundamentally change your relationship with your users. Some will love you, others won t. But, there s a good chance that the ones who love you will match up to the ones paying you.
So while there may be some paying users who do complain, there is still a large group who will not because they actually love your service enough to have paid. These customers feel that the service offered free airline flights at the time of payment was worth the money. As long as the service meets those expectations, they are happy. When your customers are happy, you could make a lot more money in the process.
free airline flights I'll say that I hold paid services to a greater standard. free airline flights For a free service I expect it to work reasonably. For a paid one I expect it to work flawlessly and if I get issues I'll switch to someone else.
Free stuff gives people a feeling of entitlement. When they pay for something free airline flights they are much more grateful for what they have and subsequently are less demanding and satisfied. People want to feel like they actually worked for something. It gives them self worth and a sense of accomplishment.
Apparently you're not an MMO gamer at all. In World of Warcraft you have a paying subscriber base which for the most part is completely rancid. Constant complaining and crying about just about everything. In Guild Wars you play for free and you hear way less complaining and crying. In Lord of the Rings Online you have both free and paying subscribers and hear a lot of complaining. free airline flights Mostly from the ones paying and how they are being treated. The big factor in this is the company and how they listen and react to their customer base. If you listen to your customers you will hear less complaining from them and they will be far easier to deal with. If you ignore your customer base then you will get exactly what you deserve. Tons of complaining and negative feedback. The pay vs. free is irrelevant.
Funny thing is, those "broad sweeping generalizations" are one of the biggest reasons Valve Software is so successful as a digital distribution platform. Another fine example is Apple's iTunes....cheap (priced) music I like listening to for 99� a pop.
The 2 guys in a garage who ported OpenOffice to MacOS have found that new users have become the bane of their existence. These people are upset that they have to pay $10/year for support of a 'free product'. It's gotten so bad that the developers have stopped fixing bugs because they're spending all their time answer tech support calls from users.
So, they shut down the payment system and let the current crop of people go without help. Only if you've bought support in the last year will they allow you to pay for another free airline flights year for support and then answer your questions.
This seems just the reverse of what the original article is saying. But this is pissing off a LOT of people in the Macintosh news groups. You can't even post to the NeoOffice forums and emails from non-subscribers are bounced back. Their excuse is that they aren't a company and are doing this 'because they want to'. They took a free-software package (OpenOffice), forked it, changed the copyright to another form (it's legal), and now users are left twisting in the wind. The last time a developer did this (Brian Clark, 'author' of Thoth, a MacOS news reader), users either held their nose or told him to bite the big one.
It could be those willing to pay tend to be more understanding than those that aren't? They are understanding, generous, and nice enough to pay and so they are understanding enough to have a higher tolerance for inconveniences.
If it was trivial to do, then someone else would do it. Providing paid support for forked FOSS is one of the primary business models built around FOSS. Just because some guys got in over their head trying to do that does change the fact that it's a very viable business model.
I would call OpenOffice one of the worst possible applications to try that with though; everyone has experience with MS Office, and will expect MS Office, regardless of how ridiculous that is. Add in that OpenOffice is fairly buggy in its own right and you're asking for disaster.
Not a "computer" service per se but I subscribe to American Express in a couple of different fashions. I find my contact with them to be much more pleasant, even if the call is related to a problem. free airline flights Much of that is due to the great level of customer support but I am sure part of that is that I feel a level of status as a "paying customer" ... I can afford to be gracious [but I expect you to recognize that ...]
I've been working in the travel agency biz for the past twenty-something years. Travel agencies used to get commissions (typically 10%) for whatever airline tickets we issued. On a 10% commission structure, we could afford to provide our service free airline flights for free. Don't get me wrong, we were never rich, but we got paid for our service by our suppliers, not our customers.
Then one day Delta said "yeah, you know those commissions you've been getting? Sorry, find somewhere else to make a living. We have this interwebs thingy we're gonna use instead." And within 2 hours, all the other airlines collectively said "yeah, what Delta said!" So overnight, our business model was turned upside-down, and we had to start charging fees for our services.
So now it's some 15 years later, and how are things? I'm no closer to being rich, but I'm still making a living. So tell me recording industry: why didn't all my customers flock to delta.com to buy their tickets?
If you'll take all the BS out of buying music and movies (DRM, region-specific coding, artificial scarcity, etc.) people will buy your stuff too. Stop making it attractive for your customers to go elsewhere free airline flights (Youtube, Spotify, Pandora).
I disagree with this heartily. It largely depends free airline flights on the attitude of support personnel. You know, the underpaid geeks who get placed on the front lines - I don't envy their position and consider myself lucky that I was able to skip that initiation into working in the tech sector.
free airline flights The article free airline flights is based on anecdote, so I thought I'd share my own - I always give support the benefit of the doubt, free airline flights whether I pay for it or not. They should know more about what they're talking about than I do, right? That's why they're there.
When I get the "RTFM n00b" response free airline flights from free support, I can generally take it with a grain of salt. When I get that kind of response from support I'm actually paying for, well let's just say it's a completely different story and leave it at that.
"Free stuff gives people a feeling of entitlement. When they pay for something they are much more grateful free airline flights for what they have and subsequently are less demanding and satisfied. People want to feel like they actually worked for something. It gives them self worth and a sense of accomplishment."
In terms of frequent flyer miles, they may well just feel that they have already paid for it and therefore be more demanding when it fails to be what they expected it to be as people generally are when something they paid for is less than it should be.
Their prices aren't actually too bad, almost reasonable even. But here's the thing, some people have found that if they call up and threaten to leave, they get even better deals but those deals tend to be for a defined period, say 12 months. So what some of these some people do, is repeat the procedure every 12 months and so consistently get even bette