The Idea Dude

CONNECTING THE DOTS ONE AT A TIME

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Delighting your customers

If you look at the reviews for our Email Signature Pro product for the iPhone, a common theme beyond being impressed with the product is that users love our customer service. I'm really proud of that. Sometimes we can't solve the issues due to technical limitations of the iPhone but we really do try to respond in a positive manner. Most times, we answer within a few hours and often we do solve the issues.

People seem genuinely surprised that a) they get an answer, b) they get a response the same day and c) sometimes it's an email dialog because the issue is harder to track down. I guess not all app developers are equal. I mean, if you give something away for free or 99c, how much time can you afford to give support. Something's gotta give. It's tough maintaining that level of support but I always think of me being on the end. It's the least I would expect so it's the least we should do, i.e. respond timeously, professionally and never get into a fight.

So I'm incredibly impressed when I get the same level of service from the Firefox team. I'm testing their new alpha build 3.7 and found a few bugs. Within the same day of logging one of the bugs, I get an email showing activity, it gets re-assigned, cc'ed and finally an email asking for an example because they can't reproduce it. I get around to mocking up a webpage with the problem at 6pm tonight. They respond just before 10pm that it was related to another issue that was fixed today and I should try tomorrow's build.

The fact that they fixed the bug is almost secondary. To know that they were looking at the problem within the same day and then tracked it down to another bug that solves this issue was what was amazing.

I'm left with the feeling, these developers really love their product and proud of it. I doubt I would get the same response for IE or Safari. Firefox has community written all over it.

Next time I find another bug, I'll be sure to post it. Just doing my part for the Firefox community and I have this perception, they really will appreciate the help.

Today, I was the delighted customer!

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