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Ask Slashdot: Troubling Trend For Open Source Company
An anonymous reader writes "I'm one of the original founders of an open source company which offers a popular open source product (millions of downloads) targeted primarily to small businesses. We have been doing this for 10 years now and we fund the development of the open source product with the usual paid support services, custom development and addons, but over the last few years, we've noticed a troubling trend. Companies that have downloaded our product from one of the many free download sites have a question they want answered, so they call our support line. Once we politely explain the situation and that telephone support has a reasonable fee associated with it, more and more of them are becoming seriously irate, to the point of yelling, accusing us of fraud and/or scamming them. For some reason, they think a free product should have free telephone support as well, and if we don't offer free telephone support then it's not really a free product. These same people are then resorting to social media in an attempt to 'spread the word' with the same false accusations, which is starting to take its toll on our reviews, ratings, and in turn our bottom line. Does the Slashdot community have any suggestions on how we can reverse this trend? How do other open source companies handle similar situations?"
It might help if you told us who you were.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
If they don't like your product, offer them a full refund of the purchase price they paid to your company. Heck, offer them double their money back if they are not 100% satisfied.
Unless they paid some money to someone, it's not clear why they would think they are entitled to support. I've run lots of open source software that had paid support support, and have gladly paid for support when I needed it.
Studies have been done; the people that pay the least always complain the most.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
We are not an open source company, but we had a very similar problem. We ended up plain removing free/normal cost phone numbers, only the expensive support phone numbers remained. Problem solved itself.
If you think of the psychology of this, it looks like bait and switch.
To combat this, make it clear at the before the download how it all works.
Just split the company into two main parts.
Your flagship company only offers paid downloads, if you want the product, you've got to pay for support.
You then have another site/organization that offers everything for free and only has community support forums.
For example, if your product is called Corporate Wizard, you'd have your Corporate Wizard only host the Corporate Wizard software and you've got to pay money to download it (with source included of course).
However, you have a community maintained "fork" called, say, Company Mage. While the codebases are 100% identical, someone who downloaded Company Mage is downloading a community maintained product with only support forums. This way, it separates the free products/no support from the paid products with support.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
How obvious is it that support is not free? Maybe a few more notices would help. Perhaps some on the main site, by the download section, and by the support phone number.
This is a communication issue. You have limited resources, we know, but you need to target this issue exclusively for an extended period of time and communicate to the marketplace that the software is free to access but support is paid.
We use open source / free software almost exclusively and the one thing that we look for are paid for support contract options. We want to spend the money, but you would be surprised how many orgs simply don't want our money or communicate the support options clearly.
Get the advertising and messaging right and commit to it on a longer term basis. If you don't offer a properly framed counter, you allow the trolls to control the message.
And, in the end, all you can do is provide a clear message to the community. No matter how large the org, you cannot control the perception, you can however influence it. Get on the playing field and make the moves. Your real clients will appreciate it.
Setup a phone system where they have to key in their Support ID to be transferred to a support rep.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post, but if you won't give ANY information to people who call, that might be what's making them irate.
My suggestion would to be to have a pre-recorded voice which is played at the start of the call, informing the caller that this is a limited free service, and how to purchase a support subscription. The level of support given here should be roughly on par with what a capable googler could find. This would mean losing some time (= money) on freeloaders, but it might be beneficial if you can satisfy some people who might otherwise leave with a bad impression of the product and business. You might even rope a few into a subscription.
--
OpenERP.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Techno Mage.
That's asking for trouble.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You find it a surprise that you build your profit model around users having problems and needing to contact you for the fix, and then being upset that you want to make a profit on giving out the fix? I don't. And I've seen too many companies who would gladly leave in some problems to help generate more "support revenue".
I'm not even convinced that you really want to take the high road here, but if you honestly do then I would suggest the following:
1) Make sure that your website has an extensive support section that lists all known problems and the resolution for all that are resolved.
2) Offer free support by email / web only on an as-available basis. And really do have staff spend some of their available free time responding to reported problems. Who knows, you might even learn some important things about problems in your products that you don't know and will not learn if you insist that customers pay you to tell you about your problems.
3) If you do 1 and 2 then go ahead and offer priority response phone support for a fee for those who feel the need for it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It might help if you told us who you were.
It would probably help more to know how they got hold of the support line. Everywhere the number is given there should be some clear text indicating that there is a support fee required to use it. If you just advertise the line as "call us for support" and then hit them for a fee when they call it might annoy some users who are unaware of the usual Open Source model and intellectually challenged enough to not see reason when you explain.
If you are making it clear in all the locations where the number is given then introduce a premium rate number and have that as the public one with a normal rate line whose number is private available to paying customers. If your users don't read the explanation around the support number then they won't see the explanation that they are calling a premium rate number either but at least this way the default is that they pay.
You have branched out beyond specialists who understand what you do and reached the loserbase.
Very few software companies can give away their software with all the features without selling the product or having a subscription/advertising income. You're software may in fact be better than all the commercial alternatives, but I doubt it. So by attracting cheap-scape "customers", you're missing out on the most important part of developing a real client/customer relationship, namely, a customer who pays you money.
The best part about writing software is that you can SELL virtually unlimited copies for the price of developing it once. Support and add-ons is the exact opposite-- you can only do so much and everything you do requires expensive humans to do the work. So.. if you can't start charging for it, time to cut bait and change your model.
I've experienced this myself: I think those people are just assholes who think they can bully the poster's company into giving free support. They know exactly what they got and exactly what they're entitled to. They just think that if they're a big enough douche, the vendor will cave to "be nice and get a good rep". And these entitled assholes then go and give bad reviews.
You can explain to them that this is free software and support costs extra, blah, yadda, dee, da. They know it. You can put it big banners across the download link and they'll STILL insist that they're owed something.
As an online seller I can offer these suggestions:
Always bet on stupidity, people often come to you in a hurry.
But hedge on cleverness, because people aren't really stupid although they always act so sometimes but only the truly stupid perservere.
First up explain what you offer and what you don't - that's the easy part once you have words for what you don't.
Then set up layers of explanations for those who haven't understood. Start with intelligent explanations and every onion ring should get progressively stupider. Never ever make a joke outside the first and most intelligent level of explanation.
At any point you may make an apology, "I'm sorry we wasted your time with this product that was not ready yet." At this point the truth is no longer an issue because all you want is for the bloke to leave with his underpants on (by the way, Americans never apologise to anyone so if you're American then ignore this section).
If they don't accept the apology then, well it's up to you, personally I speak softly and then change their perception of the world. It sounds like a euphemism but it isn't. Make them think about something else. Two brain cells can't hold three thoughts.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
On the one hand, offering a free product and charging for support/customizations is perfectly reasonable and legit.
On the other hand, offering an enticing product that seems great until you try to use it, at which point you discover that it is impossible to get it working without pay-for support, is a bait-and-switch. THAT makes people mad.
I don't know if your customers are reacting to a disgusting sense of entitlement, or if they are reacting to having just been promised the world for free only to discover that they can't claim it without paying up.
Aside: it might not hurt to attach the phrase "to purchase support services, call:" to every place that your number appears.
I noticed this as well. Doesn't it also seem odd to you that it was submitted anonymously? . Who submitted it? Was it submitted by Microsoft to tarnish the reputation of the free software movement? The lack of details make this story so suspicious that it could very well have been Microsoft or a shill.
This is probably the root of the problem. Somewhere there is likely something saying free support through the online forums community or something similar and it isn't worded clearly enough for someone not paying attention to understand it.
Most OSS software does offer free support. It is a forum that users and volunteers answer questions for or a knowledge base of known problems and solutions or a combination of the two. It's generally when you needed to interact in real time with someone that there is a charge or they refer you to a consultancy group in your area that can help for their own fee.
I've seen similar with paid software too. I almost had a cow when I found out the $5k per year service contract with one software provider wasn't going to cover telephone support when their update broke the database structure and the program would crash on start up. Of course in this case, a manager told me they had us marked on a different service level then we purchased for some reason and comped the call. But that means other are paying for service contracts and when there is a problem if they purchase the older versions.
The way to fix this is to make the support options more clear and almost in your face when downloading the software. Perhaps if there is a help tab you can click on, a popup or menu tree for the installed software could explain this also. Either way, by the time they down load the software, it should be clear as to what support is free and what isn't. If that fails, it should be clear by the time they find a way to contact the project by phone or whatever method.
People feel more and more entitled lately. Ive done phone support for two company's in the last five years and the trend is always give me more. People become irate if you don't support a product they think you should. People become irate if there is an interruption in service. People become irate if they did something stupid to fuck up their product/service and you have to tell them what they did wrong. Hell I've even had people get mad at me because they lost service due to a bill payment issue as if it is my fault they didn't pay their bill. The reality is that people are feeling the pinch and don't want to pay more than they have to. In the words of the best customer service trainer I've trained under "its about positioning. Don't tell them what you can't do. Give them options."
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
I know exactly how to fix this, but you'll have to pay me for support.
"Welcome to the paid technical support line for the WizardWidget project. This services support fees will support the development of this project."
Then go on to point the caller to the free support options: the project's community forums, mailing lists or irc channels. Then try to sell your paid support.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
This.
Have a paid for version and a "community" version that only has public forums associated with it. Make it blatantly clear that paid for includes support (for X time period), but a community supported free version is available. If they want phone support they have to upgrade to the paid version. "Sorry, our community edition doesn't include phone support."
This can be done with the exact same codebase for both, but it also gives you the opportunity to fork (in marketing speak: differentiate the product). E.g. New features go to the paid version first and get released in to the community later. Or, do it the other way and make your free users beta test. I recommend having at least a different splash screen and the registration info available from within the program on the paid version.
Bottom line is you can't allow your free customers to have any expectation of live support. When they go to download your product they are explicitly deciding between paid and free and know what they are losing by going free.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
We're only getting one side of the story here. We have no idea what this product is, or how they are advertising their product. If customers are so upset that they're turning to social media to warn people away, maybe they are justified in doing so. I've seen many "Free" and "Open source" products that would not fall into what those of us here on slashdot would consider free or open source.
Is your software easy to use, easy to install, works great all year and then when it comes to the end of the year and it's time to do the books or do taxes does it become nearly impossible to use forcing most users to seek your support only to find out now that their entire financial history for the year is basically locked behind a wall of bugs, obfuscated config files and other nonsense? Now they have to pay for support they've never needed before and your fees could be in the tens of thousands of dollars? Perhaps the users we're talking about are the businesses comptroller that figured your software was free, it was no big deal and now he needs to go to management and tell them he needs $10k to do the taxes for the year? I could see how he could be rather upset by your services.
I'm just taking a wild guess but you're leaving us without any real details. I'm going to side with the customer on this one. If they are THAT pissed off, then you didn't make things clear to them from the beginning. The may be naive suckers, but if they are suckers... what's that make your company in the business of doing? Every company has to deal with idiots... but if there are enough idiots using your products, and you're making them mad enough that they are joining together against you and affecting your bottom line, you may very well deserve the fate you've been dealt.
I worked for a battery backup supply company and heard the owner responding on the phone to a customer after a 12 hour blackout hit. "You paid for 6 hours of backup and it lasted 10, and you want a f%$king refund?!! Are you crazy?!!!" Moral: You get what you pay for.
I don't agree. Even if it says somewhere that there is free support, it's an obvious TGTBT claim that only an idiot would believe and get irate at, if that idiot knows that the program was free.
I think these people do not know that the program was free. They think someone in their organization (maybe an IT person) paid for it, and the support goes with that.
With big, complex, multi-user applications, you can't assume that the person calling the support line is the one who selected and deployed the application, or that the person who did select and deploy the application made it clear to everyone that it's free.
Tell them to fix it themselves and submit patches.
Tell them they can have their money back.
Tell them that you could have fixed it for $100 but now you'll have to add the Moron Surcharge and now it's $10k.
Tell them to fuck off.
Just make sure you setup good support forums, faqs, etc. Then make it so that anyone gets one support call for free. Register the user when they make the first call. Make sure you explain this is their one freebie and that any additional calls, emails, etc. will be charged at your reasonable rate. It's a loss leader of course but in the long run - you'll end up selling more support to appreciative customers.
IT may be a combination or either.
What I don't understand though would be the supposed trash talking on internet forums afterwards. If it was someone who was separated from the install, I don't see why they would have an investment in it enough to trash talk the project.
On the other hand, I was trying to get the mapi call list for a legal suit so it would in work with a communications app other then Outlook, and I ended up with lawyers showing up demanding I cease trashing them. All I said was that the consultant they recommended refuses or is not capable of helping us integrate it into anything other then outlook and exchange and was looking for a published list of the calls it used to adapt our existing application for use instead. So what people consider trash talk might not exactly be that.
If the information that you charge for phone support is on your website, people will skip it in their hurry to get a number. Instead, during the installation, ask them which version they want to try. Don't call it "free" and "paid" versions (hint: they will click free), call it "with phone support" and "without phone support". If they choose the one with the phone support, send them to a sales website that then informs them that the phone support will cost them - but they are free to use the version without phone support (as well as information on purchasing support).
Basically, change the perception of the consumer - don't make them choose between "free" or "paid" versions, since they will pick the free one without understand ALL the consequences (the only consequence to them is saving money). Make them think in terms of supported and unsupported versions. Who knows, you might even drive up sales by this?
A winner in the Jumping To Conclusions event.
It's like this, 1%-er:
So, the submitter is a multi-millionaire / billionaire; got it. You're quite perceptive.
people download some free software that promises to solve their problems.
And the software promises to solve problems, not simply "here's what it does, you can use it for free."
The software is confusing and poorly laid out.
You know this how? I can only imagine from trying to futz with your own creations maybe?
They do what comes naturally: ask the company to stand behind their product.
Ah, entitlement, a lovely attribute; "stand behind what you gave me for free - I want ___."
The company replies with a crafty, "pay us, we will only help you for $$$, this is the only language we understand, otherwise get lost and back to your hovel, peasant."
It's getting hard to deal with all the stupidity in your one post in an itemized manner.
The customer is then rightfully angry that such a bait-and-switch has been pulled. Do you get it now, Corporate Master?
Bait-and-switch huh? Like if I called the creators of Apache, or Ubuntu, or the Linux kernel and demanded help, and they directed me to a paid support channel, it'd be bait-and-switch?
I suppose I see the attraction of arguing with the straw men in your head: you can always win, even if you look like an idiot for doing it.
This guy's on to us.
We are based in Argentina, and, while most of our products are proprietary, they are FS/OSS-friendly ( as in, they run on GNU/Linux, offer open APIs and interfaces, are standards-compliant, etc.). Recently, we released one of our products under the GPL, and we are getting the same kind of calls.
It's not something that worries me. Here's how we deal with it: All of our employees are Free Software advocates (That's by design, we mostly hunt for employees in LUGs, both physical and online). They understand the issue, and they know how to explain it. Our usual metaphors include food-based explanations (we create free recipes that you can download for free, and cook/modify/share as you please, but if you want us to go to your house and cook for you, you have to pay, or if you want a printed book with our recipes, that has a price too. We also use other metaphors, such as Music (the music is free to download, if you want the band to play at your party, or you want to go to a concert, you pay for it).
Most people understand, some people don't. Those that don't are your average crappy customers, that would do the same kind of stuff even if the software weren't free. The people that call our system a scam are the same kind of customers that buy our non-free solutions and demand exceptional things, such as this woman who recently filed a complaint because she wanted us to go to her business and install free temporary replacement hardware while we processed a repair on a 4 year old system whose warranty had expired. Or the people that buy our DVR/NVR solution, connect a crappy 420TVL CCTV camera to it, configure the system in 320x240, and call complaining they can't see a license plate at 100 meters distance, and demand we send them a technician for free. Or schools that purchase our e-learning solution and demand that we go to their institution, for free, as many times as necessary, to teach their professors how to use it. Also, people react the same way with plugins and software updates. We offer free upgrades for life on many of our systems, and people call and demand specific, custom features, in a short timeframe, and then get irate when we explain that free upgrades for life doesn't mean unlimited custom development for free.
Some customers are great, and some customers are demanding, self-entitled, annoying, loud bitches who want to scam free work out of you while pretending that themselves are being scammed by you. That's how it works, regardless of the license of the product.
Our solution: We've split our product into two independent products. One of them is GPL and comes with NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER, and explain that very clearly on our webpage. The other one is proprietary, and has several support contracts available. By making them clearly different products (while the codebase is exactly the same), we've cut down on complains. That, and good people with a clear understanding of Free Software manning the phones. And a lot of patience.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Are the people calling you potential buyers of support? [Assuming they are not freeloaders by nature, individuals who might not want your business support, etc]
If they are potential buyers this is an EXCELLENT marketing opportunity. They are calling you for something they need. Converting that into a transaction is a clear path that many callers themselves may expect subconsciously. It's all about positioning and expectation management!
The key thing is to setup expectations, right from before they call, to the number they call, what they hear when they call, about the different levels of support, paid & free, how they can reach the right tier of support for their category, how they can upgrade their support tier, and how they can resolve their problem.
For instance, if you have a support forum + support FAQ, redirect all free callers to that --- AFTER telling them that free support is community supported, with customers just like them providing support.
If they want a specific type of support or customization, or installation support, then direct them to the relevant FREE instruction manual, and tell them that premium support for these is available for enterprise/business customers.
For callers make sure your IVR script takes into account both free and paid users [if you use the same 1800 number, you could also give toll-free numbers for premium support users, and toll numbers for free users].
Your script could be
1. Premium support users: Please enter your support id to be taken straight to our support team
2. If you do not have a support id:
Press 1 for free installation support options [list out website address, forum address, FAQ address, etc.].
Press 2 to buy premium installation support [[ Note the 'to buy' clearly setting their expectation ]]
Press 3 for free post-installation support options [list out website address, forum address, FAQ address, etc.].
Press 4 to buy premium annual support
Press 5 to reach sales
Wherever you list your number make sure it's listed as 'Premium Support Number' or 'Business Support' or something which will influence the caller to understand that this is not free support. For instance you may now have 'Toll-free support number' - which is misleading!
I guarantee if you do this right, you will have more satisfied users and potential customers!
If you want some consulting around this to help you implement this fully, drop me a note - I've been doing marketing/prodmgmt for an open-source based software vendor for a few years. [[ prasanna at wignite dot com ]]
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
That didn't strike me as in the spirit of Open Source.
Why?
Are you one of the guy's "customers" who thinks everything should be free, and who downloaded a "free" app and now thinks everything associated the the app ought to be free? The big problem is that when you give people something of value for free, they start to presume that you are a doormat who should be walked upon. In the real world, things like tech support and websites cost money and that money has to come from somewhere... The supporters of open source software have long flooded places like Slashdot with talk that companies can exist in the open source environment by giving their code away and charging money for things like support, but it seems that if anybody tries to charge for anything then that person becomes "evil"
What happened to all the talk of "free as in freedom"?
Since when does the "spirit of open source" mean ANYTHING should be "free as in beer"?
Sadly, the combined effects of the illusion of a "free" internet (where users actually trade their privacy for services like facebook and google) and "free" software seem to have watered and fertilized the weedier portion of society whose members think they are entitled to the fruits of the labors of others. When you get something for free, a civilized person is happy and grateful; a leech gets angry and ornery that other people did not work even harder to give him more for free and did not work even harder to make it better