Tell me why

Growing up, I’ve always heard what to do and what not to do, but rarely has anyone taken the time to explain to me why. Like stacking bricks without using mortar, the internal list I built over the years inevitably crumbled under its weight, especially when contradictions started piling up.

It was then that I started questioning everything and only accepting things that I understood. As a welcome surprise, this ended up being the greatest asset for a budding software engineer. It allowed me to build really cool things and piece together unconventional technology, like rendering React inside Angular.

I also made this the cornerstone of YoPrint customer support. I will always take the time to explain why you can’t achieve certain things in YoPrint, going into technical details. This also sets the expectation of whether a feature will be considered for YoPrint and, if not, why.

For example, we don’t write custom modules for individual companies because we cannot maintain so many forks in our code, and they will become neglected. We don’t offer self-hosting because we will need to charge significantly more to make it a viable business, and we are building software for small to medium-sized businesses. We are rewriting our core engine because it allows us to add new features like Shopify sync despite how time-consuming it is.

Once explained, most customers understand where we are coming from and appreciate our candor. Sometimes, we even have a few back-and-forths with our customers that allow us to consider the issue in a new light and solve it differently.

Customers are not dumb. We need to get better at explaining why.