BSSA #78 - Handling customer support like a pro 🚀

Hey! 👋

How are you? How was your Black Friday?

For me it was great! We managed to release our new plan before, we had many installs, our users crushed it and we did our best day ever in the amount of sales!

Before going into this newsletter, I wanted to tell you that I’m now on Instagram.

I will share short video content to help you build and grow your Shopify App. You can follow me by clicking here 🔥

Here is what we’ll talk about today:

• 55+ Point Marketing Checklist to help you grow your Shopify App

• The $56,000 MRR Milestone and the 22,000 followers milestone

• The pricing system that will change your business

• Ty Chapman reached $1,000,000 ARR with his Shopify App

• The best framework to crush your customer support

Let’s gooo!

55+ Point Marketing Checklist to help you grow your Shopify App

I just released something you’ll like! I created a checklist you can use in your own Shopify App.

You get more than 55 ways to grow your Shopify Apps. There are things I’ve personally used and others I didn’t.

But everything inside works! And if you’re not getting any installs or traction, you have a huge list to try different things!

It’s completely FREE.

You can get it here: https://matdesousa.gumroad.com/l/checklist

The $56,000 MRR Milestone and the 22,000 followers milestone

We just reached $56,000 MRR for WideBundle and WideReview. I think I didn’t tell you about the $54,000 milestone or the $55,000 because we grew so fast.

The 2023 goal was $60K MRR. We still have a month to go, let’s see if we can reach this!

And at the same time, I reached 22,000 followers on X (Twitter)!

So thank you all for that! More content coming!

The pricing system that will change your business

In October I tested a new pricing for a week: incremental pricing.

The price increases based on the number of sales. And it can be scary for many of you:

• Will the best users leave because it’s too expensive?

• Will I still get installs?

• Will everyone leave?

So I decided to test it so I can tell you more about it.

And now all the people that were on that plan either converted or left. No one is on trial anymore.

We’re 14 days into it and for now, I have to be honest, the results are IN-CRE-DI-BLE 🤯

Listen to me. The results are so incredible that everyday I’m analyzing data and I’m asking myself: Where did I make a mistake?!

It can’t be possible!

Now we have to wait for 2 specific days:

• December 14

• January 14

So it will be 1 month until the new pricing with paying users and then 2 months.

The first month will tell us the initial MRR made and churn. And the 2nd one will confirm it.

I’m really excited because for the moment the results are way better than expected:

• We’re making more money

• With fewer users

• With a lower churn

And this is why I think I made mistakes somewhere because it can’t be possible!

I can’t wait to let you know how it went. But let me tell you something, be prepared to switch your pricing and do the test like me!

If it works properly, I’ll give you a complete tutorial on how to test if this pricing would be amazing for you WITHOUT impacting your current MRR. And then how to do the transition.

Now I’m telling you this right now but I’m still waiting. Perhaps I did make a mistake 🫣

Ty Chapman just reached $1,000,000 ARR with his Shopify App

Ty Chapman is the founder of MonsterUpsell and his Shopify App just reached $1M per year!

He started his Shopify App around the same time as me. But he’s going faster than me!

We use to talk a lot with Ty to share insights and knowledge. And Ty is an amazing Shopify App Founder!

He manages a team just like me and you should definitely follow him on X as he told me was going to share more about his businesses!

He doesn’t work like me so you have even more data to build your own app!

You can follow him by clicking here

And you should definitely share your Shopify App journey with other founders who started around the same time as you and are as big as you.

It allows you to share your problems with each other to get insights and another brain.

The best framework to crush your customer support

I had a call with my support today. It was a way to reinforce a few processes and also train them on the framework I’m about to show you.

When you handle support, for every conversation you’ll have 2 steps:

1. Collecting information

2. Giving the solution

It always consist in these 2 steps.

See it like doctors. They ask you a lot of questions to understand your problems before giving you a solution. And they do it even if they already know what problem you have.

→ It gives you confidence that you understood the problem

→ It gives your users trust that you’re actually checking their problems

And you should always collect information even if you know what problem they have!

Imagine going to the doctor and the doctor gives you some pills without asking questions. You’d think that he didn’t understand what you had. That’s the same here.

Once you have enough information, you can transition to the solution by repeating the problem to the user. It ensures you understood it properly and show your customer you understood it also.

When you fix the issue, I created a simple framework that you can apply everytime: The AEA framework.

A = Apologize

E = Explain

A = Alternative

The Apologize step is to say sorry to the user if the issue is caused by your app or to show compassiong. “I’m sorry for your problem, I understand your concern, don’t worry I got this”

The Explain step should do the transition to the Alternative. Here you will explain what is the problem, what you discovered so that they can get context about the Alternative.

Finally, the Alternative is the final solution. It’s called Alternative because it’s not always the direct solution to the problem. Sometimes it can be an alternative!

You should always have these 3 phases. You wouldn’t trust a doctor who gives you pills if he doesn’t explain why they’re helpful.

And by showing compassion you show your users you care about them and they can be more open.

You can test it, open a conversation with a user that didn’t go well such as a frustrated user. Chances are you missed one of the phases (AEA) or you didn’t follow the 2 steps: Collecting information, Giving solution.

And this system works for ANYTHING. Not just an actual problem.

Let’s take an example! Your user wants to do something but want YOU to do something.

So they ask you: “Can you do it for me?”

But you already handle many other users so you don’t have time. By asking this question, the user is creating a conversation and you should follow the 2 steps.

In this case, you can ask why he wants you to do it for him (collect information) so you understand the problem.

Now let’s say he tried but couldn’t do it himself.

You go to the solution step, but you can’t do it for him because you have too many people. That’s when the “Alternative” will be actually used. You don’t have a solution you have an alternative. And you follow each phase.

A: “I’m really sorry but I can’t do it for you”

E: “Currently I’m handling 4 customers at the same time and it’s becoming hard, if I do it for you it means the 4 other people will have to wait and they have the same expectation as you”

A: "What I suggest is you follow this article and you tell me exactly where you’re facing an issue so I can help you”

You didn’t have a solution here but you did have an alternative. But in most cases you’ll actually have a solution.

Now let’s say the user adds another question or problem on top of that, then you start a new cycle.

“But I couldn’t find this in the article” → Okay, can you show me what you didn’t find? (Collect information)

This system will allow you to transform frustrated users into happy customers!

That’s it for today’s email!

I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to share my newsletter with someone else: https://news.matdesousa.com/

And let me know what you want me to discuss in the next email!

See you next week,

Mat