» Support and Small Software Shops

One of the hardest things for an ISV¹ like myself and others is the balancing of roles; coder, business, marketing and product support. Support is one of the easiest areas to cut corners on because it takes place after the sale, but personal support is one of the advantages of buying from an ISV. On this personal level, the customer can have real input on the direction of the feature map. Try asking Microsoft to add a specific feature that you need.

Alex King posts a very thorough entry on product support and the ISV.

The main thing ISV customers need to understand is how much support actually costs us. Answering a support ticket or forum post may be easy, but what about examinig a customer’s modified codebase or a thirty minute phone call? That time spent is real time taken away from other aspects of the business.

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