As a uISV I've always put customer service as one of the areas that I want to exceed expectations. I have always been good with customers, which for a software developer can be a unique thing. A lot of developers I know would rather never see a customer, they just want to code. And sometimes you don't ever want the customer to see them either. While having great customer service should not be your sole differentiator, it does not mean you should not strive to achieve great customer service.
I've always admired the length that Patrick McKenzie has gone to provide support to his customers (and even some of his competitors customers.) I used Patrick as the gold standard of customer service. I recently received a comment through my website (for creating employee schedules.) They actually provided both their email and phone number which I've found out to be fairly rare thing to do. The customer briefly described their scheduling pain and wanted to know if Web Work Schedules could help.
I composed a brief email back and sent it off. A short while later the email bounced back undeliverable. I verified the email address and then checked the domain to see if I could find their web site. Still no luck, so I decide to do it the old fashion way and pick up the phone and call him. Thankfully he was working today and was able to give me a few minutes of his time.
It turns out the feature he needs is not currently in WWS, but it is a feature that would be useful to most of my customers, so I have no problem implementing it. Like I said before, customized software is a slippery slope, which is why I evaluate each feature request. The customer told me that he had purchased some scheduling software before. It was hard to use and he could not get it to work. The company never responded to his questions. He felt that he just wasted his time and money.
Contrast that to the effort I've made so far. I tried to email him, but that failed. Then I call him and ask him questions about his problems. I listen to his answers and explain that the current state of WWS will not solve his exact problem, I would like to work with him to create a solution that will. I followed up the phone call with an email outlining the steps to take if he would like to work with me to enhance WWS so that it solves his problem. I also mentioned I'd would wave the monthly fees during development of the new feature.
So how does this customer feel about my company? Well I'll let you judge by his email response:
"Thanks again for working with us on this that is GREAT customer service."
Unrelated side note: I find it funny that the last couple of potential customers that have found me on search engines and have contacted me happen to live within a few hours of where I'm located. The world seems to be getting smaller every day.
