Customer Support Doesn't Have to Suck

Having done support for my own startup, and now that I'm working at a startup where support is make for break for us, I totally agree with the pov of this post. But, ironically, I don't see any clear indication that GitHub sticks to this culture.<p>Every ticket or question I've sent in to GitHub support has been met with hostility. I submitted my third such ticket just this last week, a follow-up to an issue I had a day or two ago, and got a rather gruff response from Tekkub about how he had "already addressed this in the last ticket." His response might've made more sense if I had received the response prior to sending out the 2nd response, but my intent was simply to update with more info.<p>In general, I'm a fanatic zealot about GitHub. I think you guys have put together one hell of a product. It's like developer crack. Seriously, you guys even got Torvalds hooked now it seems. However, I've never gotten anything but attitude from the GitHub support line.

Working at a high-touch hosting services vendor I understand all customer requests to be something that must be individually considered and addressed - but that's within the context of a much larger hosting partnership that funds such consideration on a regular basis.<p>Is there risk to the "positive" reputation you may get from doing this on in a B2C or low-touch B2B environment? Will this re-anchor customer expectations and lead to disappointment when receiving standard support?<p>I'm trying to think of a B2C company that's known for freebie's and a "customer is always right" attitude (names are escaping me at the moment). I'd feel slighted if I didn't receive that exceptionally high service level associated with the brand.

I think exceptional customer support is one of the most critical and yet most overlooked aspects of running a startup. It's how you turn customers into fans, and fans is often the difference between winning and losing.<p>Through our previous app (<a href="http://fivesecondtest.com" rel="nofollow">http://fivesecondtest.com</a>) and our current (<a href="http://bugherd.com" rel="nofollow">http://bugherd.com</a>) I've always tried to go above and beyond. Every time we have an unhappy customer I go so far above and beyond to help them that I more often than not turn a hater into a fan. Turning a negative support request into a positive Tweet shout out is a major win for me.<p>I can't count the number of times we've resolved a customer complaint and had them the very next day start paying us money. Yesterday we found a customer complaint in the "spam" folder from 3 weeks ago, we responded, apologised and let the customer know that we're changing to Zendesk as a result. Today they signed up to our top tier plan. THAT is a customer support win.<p>Today someone responded to our "how are you finding Bugherd?" email saying they hadn't had time to try out the app, so we extended their trial without them even asking. We do this all the time. It costs us nothing, and may win a paying customer.<p>We'll offer refunds to users who we can't help, we'll give discounts when our plans don't suit, we'll give away free months when a customer is waiting for a feature we haven't built yet. Anything to ensure that customer becomes a fan. Even if it turns out they leave us, we want to ensure they leave happily.

Holy shit, he read my mind. We're just wrapping up our yc application for <a href="http://inboxissues.com" rel="nofollow">http://inboxissues.com</a> - a browser extension that is a bridge between customer support emails and the github issue tracker. We've been calling it rapportive for support, but it also goes the other direction: commit a fix to a feature or bug? notify customers when the feature ships.<p>Apologies for the landing page, we just finalized the idea on Saturday and we're feverishly working on updating the site with more info!

Anecdotal: I remember seeing this from KLM a little while ago. They take customer service (not necessarily even support) to an extreme by committing random acts of kindness for passengers waiting in terminals: <a href="http://surprise.klm.com/" rel="nofollow">http://surprise.klm.com/</a>

You don't need to operate in the first tier of customer support to help them either. We have a forum that developers monitor &#38; post to (<a href="http://forum.brightcove.com/brgh/?category.id=developers" rel="nofollow">http://forum.brightcove.com/brgh/?category.id=developers</a>). It's easy and not disruptive to interact with customers this way and it has the advantage of serving as a record so future users with the same problem. Users help users too, it's not only developers posting.

I do all the support for Tiki-Toki (<a href="http://www.tiki-toki.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.tiki-toki.com</a>) at present and, to my surprise (I am quite a grumpy person), I quite enjoy it.<p>It really helps you get to know your own software and pinpoint areas where people are struggling and usability improvements are needed. Plus, you learn what new features people want.