One of the most important tasks I (Nathaniel) handle at Spreedly is pre-sales and customer support. It’s critical that I am the one handling it at this point in Spreedly’s life for two reasons: first, because awesome customer support is core to Spreedly as a business, so as CEO I am setting the long-term tone and putting in place the procedures that will make it great over the long haul. And second, since I’m responsible for making sure Spreedly as a business has a clear and coherent vision and direction, being in constant contact with customers helps me stay very aware of where we’re at and where we need to go.

But if customer support is one of the most important tasks I handle, it’s also one of the hardest, but not for the reasons you might think. I don’t mind the time, or the occasional complaint, or researching the various questions we get. What I find really hard is when someone asks for something that I know Spreedly needs, but that we’re just not able to roll out yet. As a founder of Spreedly, I feel the inadequacies in it strongly, much more strongly than I had ever imagined before getting to this point. When those inadequacies get pointed out, saying “I know, that would be awesome, but no we don’t have it yet and we won’t for a while,” is really hard.

When 37signals tells us to Start with No, what they fail to mention is just how hard it can be to do so. But better to say “no” than to make false promises and let people down. So I shall continue to persevere, and now you know that when I say “no” to something you ask for, I probably want it even more than you do!