The Hack - Notify Users of Bug Fixes They Haven't Reported

AARRR stage - Retention

Growth Problem - How to Proactively Reach Out to Users

Haxplanation:

Software bugs, they're as much a reality in a startup as their IRL bedbug brethren are in a 2-star motel. Which is to say that you shouldn't sweat about it too much but put a process in place to deal with the situation proactively.

That way when something does go wrong, you are able to fix the situation quickly. If your tech co-founder is worth his salt then you should already have a continuous integration process in place to squash those pesky bugs in a jiffy. If not, then you should definitely look at implementing continuous deployment if you're ever to become a true lean startup.

But do you really think that fixing bugs your users report is going to blow their minds? Of course not, it's part of their expectation. Your job is to hack this expectation to turn ordinary users into your product's evangelists. Here's how.

Just Hack It:

• To really light up your users' craniums with delight, why not tell them about bugs that have been fixed that they weren't even aware of?
• Now THAT is going above-and-beyond, and something that your users are sure to appreciate
• In order to implement this, make sure that you have a robust back-end reporting system in place that monitors errors in real-time. Once again, talk to your tech co-founder
• Then set up an autoresponder template in your transactional email system that will automatically send the user an email advising that the bug has been fixed
• Congratulations! You have just managed to hack an army of zealous evangelists for your product…

Source or Inspiration:

http://blog.statuspage.io/5-steps-to-5000-in-monthly-recurring-revenue