[jasonfried]

As I mentioned in my post, high-touch, full-service doesn't have to be the permanent model. Our plan isn't to do it this way forever. Our plan is to do it this way for a while so we can learn everything we can. Then later on we can automate this and make it self-service. The product will be a lot better off because of it. This was pg's point in his original post as well.

[ericabiz]

As a data point from another SaaS company owner, we thought this would be temporary too, but we found out it was so valuable in increasing customer retention and engagement that we are now planning to make it permanent (see my post above--we're hiring a FT person for this now.) The cost-effectiveness of this is off the charts. Patrick found out about this from me when I spoke about it at Microconf and I already have people from there telling me it's made them $500/hr+ (I believe it, as I've seen similar numbers in my own SaaS company.)

Oh, I should add: If you want people to rave about your company, there's nothing better than this onboarding process to do so. People become sort of religious about your business after a first-touch customer experience like this one. Probably preaching to the choir if you are Jason Fried, but this goes double for everyone else reading this who's building a software company.

[nathana]

I'm glad to hear that companies such as yours that are doing this are not necessarily considering making it permanent. I read PG's original article, and although you make reference to it, I felt he was addressing a different sort of issue than it sounds like you are. In your case, you actually went out of your way to engineer internal systems that let you do things manually, and you probably could have spent the same time and engineering resources you used to do that to instead develop the automation you don't have yet.

I may be in the minority, but let me give you some perspective as a potential customer who has experienced this kind of hands-on "service" from other SaaS-y outfits: I WANT automation from your service. I have worked with 2 companies that made me jump through all kinds of hoops to get an account set up with them when I could have had a usable account provisioned and active in 5 minutes had they automated their processes. As a result, it took days, because (surprise) their employees have their hands full, and I also have better things to do (you know, actual work responsibilities and customers of my own to respond to) than to have my hands held jumping through all of your contrived and artificial hoops just to use your service. That's just a waste of my time and yours and something that only ends up causing unnecessary delays to service turn-up, and in both cases, it seriously soured my taste for the service and almost made me contemplate throwing in the towel and going with a different solution.

This isn't the feeling that you want to leave your new customers with who are trying very hard to give you their money. You mean every time we need to make a change to service parameters, I need to submit a spreadsheet with my change request to somebody that's going to plug it in on your side by hand? MAYBE 24 hours later, if I'm lucky? Forget that: I'll go with somebody that gives me an API or a web portal that I can use to make the changes myself in a matter of minutes.

[tvtime15]

But what about "post-sale"? I think there will always be customer demand for concierge-level of service. Some SaaS models do lend themselves to self-service, but others don't. Knowing that distinction is key.

[jasonfried]

Anyone who's signed up at the concierge-level of service will always get that level of service. And if we ultimately go self-service, I'd still keep the concierge-level of service around, just at a premium. We might even consider adding a concierge-level of service tier to Basecamp.