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When you think about running a successful WordPress plugin business, your mind might jump to development, new features, or clever marketing hacks. But as Mark Westgard and Maarten Belmans discussed in their recent conversation here, customer support is often the backbone of sustainable growth. If you’re a solo founder, building your first few products, or scaling up with a small team, the way you approach support can make all the difference. Start with Yourself, But Don’t Get Stuck There Maarten began Studio Wombat as a one-person operation, answering support tickets himself. This is how most indie developers start, It’s raw, direct feedback and essential for improving your product. But as he candidly shared: “It’s unhealthy if I’m doing support because I get agitated sometimes and I’m not trained to handle that well.” Recognizing burnout risk, he eventually brought in a part-time support agent. This balance keeps him connected to his customers (“That’s how I communicate with customers. So I kind of want to keep doing that, just not too much.”) while freeing up time for development and running the business. Thanks to our sponsor Whether you’re growing a list or launching your next campaign, Omnisend makes it easy to connect through email and SMS. With smart automation, powerful targeting, and insights that matter, it’s built to help creators and businesses drive real results fast. Use the code `OpenChannels` and get 30% off your first 3 months of any paid plan. Scale Your Support with Systems, Not Just People One of Maarten’s key strategies is rigorous documentation and saved replies: “I have like 90 documents for [the form builder plugin] and I think 30 or 50 even 50 saved replies. So there’s a lot of things that I could just quickly copy paste the reply.” Even with seven products, Maarten and his part-time support agent can handle up to 50 tickets a day which is an impressive scalability for a small team. The key? Great self-serve resources and efficient canned responses. Bring in AI to Cut Down on Repetitive Requests Support doesn’t have to be all manual. Studio Wombat uses an AI assistant that surfaces answers from their documentation before a ticket is even created. If the AI can’t help, the ticket goes to a human. “I get no basic questions anymore whatsoever… It’s really geared to only do everything that’s found in the documentation and I do think that it’s doing that really well.” This keeps the human team focused on complex or high-value issues, while routine questions are handled instantly. Write Documentation for Both Humans and Machines Using AI as a first line of support encouraged Maarten to improve his documentation: “It does help me write documentation a little bit differently because I’ll mess with my own AI and ask it questions and when it gets stuck, I know that it’s my fault. Right. I have to just provide better documentation…” Solid, machine-readable docs don’t just help your customers, they also improve the effectiveness of automation and reduce manual ticket volume. Never Lose the Human Touch While automation is a time-saver, Maarten and Mark both stress that nothing replaces real, human interaction when it counts. Mark put it plainly: “If I contact a company support and I get an AI response back, I’m just not interested. I always want to talk to a human…” For future-proofing your business and maintaining a killer reputation, always have humans available for nuanced, specific, and high-priority requests.

When you think about running a successful WordPress plugin business, your mind might jump to development, new features, or clever marketing hacks. But as Mark Westgard and Maarten Belmans discussed in their recent conversation here, customer support is often the backbone of sustainable growth. If you’re a solo founder, building your first few products, or scaling up with a small team, the way you approach support can make all the difference.

Start with Yourself, But Don’t Get Stuck There

Maarten began Studio Wombat as a one-person operation, answering support tickets himself. This is how most indie developers start, It’s raw, direct feedback and essential for improving your product. But as he candidly shared:

“It’s unhealthy if I’m doing support because I get agitated sometimes and I’m not trained to handle that well.”

Recognizing burnout risk, he eventually brought in a part-time support agent. This balance keeps him connected to his customers (“That’s how I communicate with customers. So I kind of want to keep doing that, just not too much.”) while freeing up time for development and running the business.

Thanks to our sponsor

Whether you’re growing a list or launching your next campaign, Omnisend makes it easy to connect through email and SMS. With smart automation, powerful targeting, and insights that matter, it’s built to help creators and businesses drive real results fast. Use the code OpenChannels and get 30% off your first 3 months of any paid plan.

Scale Your Support with Systems, Not Just People

One of Maarten’s key strategies is rigorous documentation and saved replies:

“I have like 90 documents for [the form builder plugin] and I think 30 or 50 even 50 saved replies. So there’s a lot of things that I could just quickly copy paste the reply.”

Even with seven products, Maarten and his part-time support agent can handle up to 50 tickets a day which is an impressive scalability for a small team. The key? Great self-serve resources and efficient canned responses.

Bring in AI to Cut Down on Repetitive Requests

Support doesn’t have to be all manual. Studio Wombat uses an AI assistant that surfaces answers from their documentation before a ticket is even created. If the AI can’t help, the ticket goes to a human.

“I get no basic questions anymore whatsoever… It’s really geared to only do everything that’s found in the documentation and I do think that it’s doing that really well.”

This keeps the human team focused on complex or high-value issues, while routine questions are handled instantly.

Write Documentation for Both Humans and Machines

Using AI as a first line of support encouraged Maarten to improve his documentation:

“It does help me write documentation a little bit differently because I’ll mess with my own AI and ask it questions and when it gets stuck, I know that it’s my fault. Right. I have to just provide better documentation…”

Solid, machine-readable docs don’t just help your customers, they also improve the effectiveness of automation and reduce manual ticket volume.

Never Lose the Human Touch

While automation is a time-saver, Maarten and Mark both stress that nothing replaces real, human interaction when it counts. Mark put it plainly:

“If I contact a company support and I get an AI response back, I’m just not interested. I always want to talk to a human…”

For future-proofing your business and maintaining a killer reputation, always have humans available for nuanced, specific, and high-priority requests.