The 5% of customers that actually talk to you are the most important ones: they tell you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong and how you are perceived by others (as opposed to what you think you’re doing right/ wrong and how you think you’re coming across).

This is already invaluable and certainly worth your time. What’s more they talk to other people too and probably more so than the 95% of customers who don’t talk to you.

You don’t get to choose your customers, they choose you.

Most of them are great guys and gals, some of them are “alright” and some of them are completely impossible and no matter what you’ll do they’ll continue to insult you, tell everybody they know and everybody on the internet who will listen how bad your product is and what a terrible person you are: “on the internet nobody knows that you are a dog”.

This tiny minority of 0.1% and the things they put you through are the price you pay for being in business: Don’t let them get to you, give them their refund, be friendly, accept the blame no matter how unreasonable, always stay polite: they’ll soon get tired of having a go at you.

Also, don’t get involved in a 24 hour email duel: reply quickly to the first few emails until it’s clear that you’ve done everything you can. Then calm down and let them calm down for a half day or so. NEVER write an email while you’re angry. NEVER refuse to reply.

The best outcome with irritating customers is: They’ve got what they wanted. You are completely blameless.

As long as all the bad things they say about you are false, there is good chance that people that know them won’t place too much worth on their opinions and that they’ll give themselves away with the way that they tell their falsehoods.

The days when everything that was written on the internet was taken at face value are long gone.

Even better, the 5% of customers that have talked to you and to whom you’ve over-delivered might come to your rescue: “Gill Gates was very friendly and polite to me and spent a lot of time helping me sort out {insert problem here}. I can’t believe a word of what {insert name of accuser here} says.”

Just my 5 cents.

I have had had no problem with this policy so far and it means I am guaranteed useful feedback. I make sure to always be polite and responsive. Thankfully I don’t get many refund requests.

However, some customers are jerks: I had customers who bought every new product I released, then asked for a refund or performed a chargeback. Of course they did this to keep the product.

I also found that the registration keys we sent to some of these customers ended up on pirated software sites.

Anyway, there are few such customers.

About customer support: I don’t aggree with your opinion. Customer support takes a lot of time.

When a customer needs a lot of support, I often tell him that it’s obvious that our software is not a good match for him, tell him about a competing product, and refund his money, while allowing him to keep the product. This way he stops bothering me.

I am very polite and I apologize to the customer but I make it clear that I can’t answer more than 3-4 mails per purchase.

In the time saved this way, I improve the program, and end up earning more than if I kept the “time sucking black hole” customer’s money.

Only about 5% of the buyers of the software need support. Treating these 5% extra well will NOT bring you word-of-mouth sales.

How about treating well the rest of the clients (the 95%)? Write a new program they need, and offer it to them for free. This way you WILL get a lot of good-will towards the company, word-of-mouth sales, etc.

Your money is not made by support. Your money is made by selling the product.

For that office supplies company you mention, it’s different because every customer talks to a seller. So 100% of the customers are influenced by how polite and willing to help them the seller is.

In shareware, only 5% of the customers talk to you. Of course you must NOT piss them off. Treat them well, help them, treat them politely, etc. But you must not waste a lot of time with them, either.