I’ve been thinking a lot about your support issues with Flex (from what I can read on the forums) and trying to think of better ways to handle things. I don’t know what kind of calls/emails you are getting, so these thoughts are just from the forums.
I thought of an analogy that might give you some ideas — think about how most of us prepare our taxes.
- We keep all our paperwork throughout the year, take it to a professional tax preparer and pay them a sum of money to take care of it for us, so we don’t have to do a thing.
- For less money, we go out and buy Turbotax. Then:
a. We use the interview process, step by step, to go through everything, looking at help occasionally, but it holds our hand, “Walk me through everything”.
Or,
b. We think we know what we are doing, so we select the “I’ll choose what I want to work on option”
c. If we are really advanced and want to see exactly what’s going on, we can choose to look at the actual forms.
d. When we are ready to file, we have the option of paying for audit protection.
This model seems to work well for TurboTax as it’s all I see in the market anymore. And if I want the Audit Defense, it’s an extra $44.99.
What about this scenario?
- I don’t want to mess with doing anything at all , so I’ll hire a professional lawn person to install my sprinkler system. Advertise your certified installers on your web page, i.e., find an installer.
- I buy a Rachio, but I’m hesitant of how much I can do on my own. For a fee (10$? 20$ 30$ 50?) a support person will talk me through the setup over the telephone
- I buy a Rachio, and I think I can do it myself, so the system steps me through what I need to make decision on. If I don’t know, the system will pick something in the middle of the road and tells me I can change it later (soil type, kind of grass, nozzle) I can see what it sets up, and if I feel I need help with my setup, Rachio will look at it for a smaller fee than if I had them talk me through the whole setup ($5? $10?) on the phone.
- I buy a Rachio, and I really do know what I’m doing, so the system lets me see many of the gory details of the parameters I can play with (just like looking at the actual forms in Turbotax)
And advertise the heck out of the Community forums so that users can help each other! This is ANOTHER great benefit of owning a RACHIO
It’s understandable that support is expensive, but your Flex product, even as beta, is really fantastic. You’ve got a great product.
These ideas may be totally wacko and crazy, but maybe it will spark some other ideas from the rest of the people in the community forums?