How to Provide Product Support
You have created your product and are ready to sell it. Before you upload your new product, take a moment to think about how you plan to provide product support for it. Product support encompasses a few things: product documentation and FAQs, support request responses, and product updates. Product support done well can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, decrease the amount of time that you spend responding to support requests, and contribute to your success as a creator on Blender Market.
Product Documentation
Product documentation can be added during product upload or editing and, once your product is published, appears in the Documentation tab of your product page. You should include thorough and clear documentation to help customers download, install, and use your product. In some cases, your documentation will be minimal—maybe you are just selling a simple low poly asset—but in other cases, like when you are selling a complex add-on, you will want to provide more extensive support documentation.
How to Write Good Documentation goes into this topic in more detail, but start off by imagining that you know virtually nothing about your product. What files should you expect to receive? How should you install them? What settings can you adjust?
Product FAQs
FAQs, or Frequently Asked Questions, can be added during product upload or editing and, once your product is published, appear in the FAQ tab of your product page. When you first upload a product, you may not have any FAQs because nobody has seen your product enough to be able to ask questions about it. That shouldn't stop you from adding some questions, though. Consider what a potential customer would ask about a product like yours. Some general suggestions to get you started:
- Where can I find product support or product usage instructions?
- How do I change ______ setting?
- Does this work with Blender version 2.xx?
- How do I update this product?
Support Requests
Both potential customers and current customers can submit questions to you directly from your product pages. The support prompt that they see will vary depending upon whether or not they have already bought your product, but you will receive their messages in the same place: your Creator Inbox. You can access the Inbox by hovering over your name in the top right corner of any Blender Market page (except where you are right now, the Help Desk) and clicking on Inbox when the menu pops up.
Do your best to answer your customers' product questions and direct them to relevant resources. If you run into an issue that you cannot answer or resolve yourself (e.g., refunds or disputes), you can use the Escalate to Admin option in the top right corner of your message. This feature will loop a Blender Market administrator into your conversation.
Product Updates
If and when you choose to update your products is up to you. We suggest including and maintaining an update log in your product description. If you have a planned update schedule, we recommend communicating this to your customers in your documentation. If you plan to release occasional updates, we suggest emailing the updated products' customers to let them know that a new update is available. Be sure to indicate in your product description or documentation whether or not updates are free for existing customers.