Something I underestimated when building a product: support

When I first started thinking about building a SaaS, support wasn't really on my list.

I was thinking about the obvious stuff:

• What features should I build?

• How should the UI look?

• How do I make it fast?

• How do I get the first users?

But the closer you get to actually putting a product in people's hands, the more you realize that users don't always experience your product the way you expect them to.

Someone will click something you never expected them to click.

Someone will misunderstand a perfectly clear sentence.

Someone will have a question that your documentation doesn't answer.

And that's where support becomes interesting.

I've started to think of support less as "helping users when something goes wrong" and more as another part of the product experience.

It can be documentation, email, chat, a human, AI. Or simply making the product good enough that users rarely need help.

I'm still figuring out what the right balance is.

For other makers here: what made you change your mind about support, if anything?