Reminds me of what Paul Graham once said:

Offer surprisingly good customer service.

Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see.

http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

The great thing about delivering surprisingly good service these days is the bar is so low. Treat your customer like a human being and they'll be very surprised.

Remarkably true.

Anecdote: first real customer (a reseller) of a consumer product that involved cell phone apps, web services and custom hardware. He had to drive by his customer 3 times because our product failed 3 times (hardware failure, configuration mistake, error in the manual). Each time the phone rang at our office we were slightly afraid it was him again. Most of the times, it was.

After it was all over and the product flew and the consumer was happy, the reseller sent us a mail about how much he enjoyed working with us and how we really cared about him and his customer. We had given him cause to drive to his customer, 100km away, 3 times too often. We expected an angry resignation, not compliments!

The bar really is ridiculously low.

With large companies the bar is often as low as being able to reach a human at all.

Anyone ever try to report a bug to Apple? It's a black hole.

Also, it's by far the easiest way to generate brand evangelists.

The better your customer service, the less good your product needs to be. Especially when you get started, you want people to be forgiving of your product mistakes.

This reminds me of when I pointed out an exploit on Zappos' website to them. They gave me a $100 GC to use on their site.

Companies like 37Signals and Zappos are full of great people and know how to show their appreciation.

Reminds me of when I couldn't find a Smart Cover for my iPad. Frustrated I emailed Steve Jobs and the next day I got a call from Ireland (I was in India then) and they delivered one to me at my home. India does not have an online (or offline for that matter) store and they don't do deliveries. Big company, very good customer experience for me with the first Apple product I bought myself.

I love the 37signals guys, the Pragmatic Programming guys as well as the Pivotal Tracker folks and the guys at Hashrocket. They really seem to put that Rework stuff into practice. Contrast those people to the Facebook-type companies that seem to essentially ignore individuals in favor of scale.

It IS possible for companies both large and small to provide some personal touches to their service and really make their users feel special. It pays dividends. The cost of those beer glasses and shipping was minimal, but the value added to their brand was incalculable. The best part is that they practice customer service like that quietly -- they aren't always talking about how great they are simply as a marketing ploy -- they quietly do great things.

For example, I am based in Shanghai and last weekend they had a server issue that affected some of my users' Basecamp access here in China (although for some reason my access had no issues) -- I emailed them about it and they responded back within a few hours with specific fixes they did in response to my general problem. They didn't just BS me and say that everything was now fine -- they actually took action. By the time I received their response, the problem was fixed and my users were back to full-speed access.

I've had similar good fortune with Andy Hunt and his folks at Pragmatic -- personal responses, sincere actions and quality followup. It's a simple formula that should be taught in business schools because so many companies seem to ignore that a single customer is the fundamental unit of your success (or failure.)

I have a little psychology app we developed and it's amazing how surprised users are when you take the time to email them back and respond to their suggestions, complaints or compliments directly. Just from my limited experience with my app users, it would appear that very few companies take a personalized, sincere interest in their users. Nearly every time I've responded to users emails (always within 8 hours, usually within 1,) I get a baffled response expressing appreciation. Excerpt: "Wow! Thanks so much for getting back to me about [my suggestions.] I never expected a response at all, let alone such a nice email. I appreciate it that you'll be incorporating [some my feature requests] into [the app] so quickly."

I'm not trying to blow my own horn, but merely illustrate that users are starved of personal respect and a sincere interest in them. Users should expect personal respect and thanks; it shouldn't come as a surprise! 37signals and some of the aforementioned companies (as well as Zappos et al,) are doing it right. Users deserve the best efforts of companies. After all, we serve the user -- not the other way around!

details matter in both product design and customer service

i had a second hand 12" powerbook G4 with applecare that gave me a lot of problems—i think it was seven screens of death—bad joojoo. anyway, it had finally gotten that usual suspects replaced all at once, and it worked fine, until the week applecare expired and the devil came to take back it's own. so the guys at the mac experience gave me a number to call and the conversation went something like this:

so, i love the idea of this computer, but it doesn't seem to love me, any chance i could get fair market value for it or something?

_well let me take a look at its history_

and after two minutes or so

_well you're out of warranty…_

PAUSE (oh shit, i'll have to sell it for parts on ebay)

_…but that's a lot of fixes and we're gonna go ahead and settle with you. since we no longer make a 12" powerbook, what would you like a 13" macbook or a 15" macbook pro_

let's just say that that was the last thing i expected.

This title is mis-leading. "Pwn" is used in a humiliating sense, like hacking a website. Pwning has never meant to become the person who helps the most people.

However, kudos to this guy. I like when companies reward volunteers for their hard work. Even if it's just a small token of appreciation. I wish more companies did this.

Online gamers often use pwn in the sense of "I accomplished a feat". In this sense, he has made it near to the top of the list of their board. I don't think anyone would argue that he was using pwned to mean "helped people".

Just thought I'd point out that you might want to blur your mailing address / phone number. Probably doesn't matter, but who knows.

He's hoping for more beer related goodies shipped to him :)

At least now we all know where to go for great beer (and we know he has at least 6 glasses with which to serve us!) So perhaps the next HN meet up could be at that dude's house.. :)

haha. It's my work address, which is pretty easy to find. The phone number is for the company that makes the pub glasses.

This reminds me of a few situations I was involved in back Not too many moons ago I acquired a salaried position for helping out members of a company's forum. Turned into years of learning and morphed into what I do today.

Kudos to 37signals for appreciating your contributions :)

This one has Gary Vaynerchuk's "Thank You Economy" written all over it.