

Ask HN: Can poor customer service be converted into good karma? - BrandonMTurner

I work at a startup that spawned out of an iPhone app.  We have a website and Android app now, but the iPhone app started it all and has gained pretty decent traction(~8M downloads).<p>At the time the iPhone application was first launched (Nov 2008) there was no company behind it.  Because there was no company behind it, there is little to no customer support to answer emails.  Now that we are a bit bigger and we try to answer 100% of customer emails. We have been pretty successful at that since Jan 2010.<p>However there is about 10k emails sitting unanswered in our email box from late 2008 until Jan 2010.&#60;p&#62;I was bored this morning and decided to go back and read some of them just to see what kind of stuff was in there. It basically breaks down pretty evenly between 3 cases:<p>1) Praise, people just sending that they enjoy the application. (Currently we answer these with an email thanking them for their kind words and suggesting that they can let others know how much they enjoy it by leaving a review in the app store.)<p>2) Feature requests for things that we now have.  Website, Android app, other in app features.<p>3) Feature requests for things we still do not have.  Mostly centered around making it international since the app is super US centric.<p>Now my question to you is this:  Would you ever consider emailing these people even though the emails are 2 years old now?  Would people just think it is annoying or think it is cool / funny / awesome.  In all seriousness, the majority of them haven't used the app in the last 2 years probably, so does that just mean this is a lost cause and we should forget about them?
======
chulipuli
Ignoring them: nothing happens.

Answering them: Could net some love from the market.

I would create a template message explaining why you did not answer (be
honest), why you are answering now, and asking if they continue to use the app
so that you can support it properly.

It won't hurt because most people won't care. Those that do will most likely
appreciate it.

Still, how much is your time worth?

