How do you handle support for a SaaS on your own?

Answer support in a slot, not whenever it arrives, and read every question for the feature behind it. When 3 people who don't know each other ask the same thing in a month, you've found the best feature your product will ever get.

What answering at midnight costs

On a shared shopping list I gave away for 14 months, I answered every message within the hour for most of a year: at 11 at night, on holiday, from a supermarket car park. Then I was tired, and for a month I didn't open the inbox at all. After a year of instant replies, a month of silence read as the product being abandoned.

Fast replies set an expectation. If you can't keep it for 5 years, don't set it in month 1.

The slot

Each product I run has a named slot in the week. Support is read in that slot, and answered properly, once. Most small-business customers are perfectly happy with a reply the next day. What they mind is no reply, or a reply that changes in tone from month to month.

The question behind the question

In the landlord tool's second year, the same question arrived 3 times in a month, from 3 landlords who didn't know each other: can it also remind the engineer who does the check, so I don't have to phone him?

It took an afternoon to build. It's the best feature the product has. And I'd never have thought of it, because I'm not a landlord.

So I read support with 2 questions in mind. What do they need right now? And has anybody else asked for this?

Write the answer once

When a question comes up twice, I write the answer as a page and link to it. Repeats become pages; pages become fewer emails. That's how a product that once took most of my evenings now takes 40 minutes a fortnight.

Ship Alone has the chapter on support without a team. The Second Product shows how one inbox works across 5 products.