On 12/28/20 22:02, Mel Beckman wrote:
Darin,
Surely you at least give the paying customers priority over the
non-paying? It’s one thing to say “I have to write paychecks no matter
what”. It’s another to say “I’ll give away my support to free
customers AND degrade support for paying customers as a result.” Your
tech support guy “walking Grandma through getting her email” is
necessarily not accessible for the duration to paying customers.
This means your staffing must be large enough to never have any
queuing, or you’re giving away your paying customers' time to
non-paying customers. Neither approach is scalable in a competitive
business environment, because SOMEBODY is paying for all those
resources, and if it’s your customers, they will buy elsewhere. Your
approach only work until you run out of other people’s money.
It's quite fascinating to me how some folk are trying their darnedest to
fit someone else's creativity into their own mold, so it's more
understandable to them :-). We live in an age of curiousity, which has
quickly replaced the age of expertise. If you don't know, ask...
The MUA many (if not all) of us are using to read this has been obtained
for free, and with ongoing support, no less. I'd like to see someone
dish out cash for a commercial alternative.
As are a ton of apps and services we use in our daily lives.
Pretty sure someone in the infrastructure space figuring out some
creativity that actually improves someone else's life with minimal
burden either way is right up there with, "That's alright with us"...
Mark.
