How to handle customer service problems
v class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;">
I’ve written a lot about lousy customer service from some tech companies.
How about an example of how companies should respond when things aren’t up to snuff?
It’s from Six Apart, the blogging company behind the Movable Type and Live Journal blogging platform and TypePad, which I use for this blog. Recently, access time has been slow. Sometimes over the past week or so, painfully slow. But instead of stonewalling or trying to minimize the problems, founders Ben and Mena Trott posted this entry: Six Apart – Mena’s Corner: The Ups & Downs of a Successful Service.
It basically explained that the company has grown so fast they’ve outstripped capacity and power at the data center they’ve been using. So they’re moving to a new and upgraded center.
That explanation was posted yesterday. Today, it was followed with another posting and an e-mail sent to every TypePad customer from CEO Barak Berkowitz, who not only provided more info on the issue but attached a detailed chart outlining immediate (over the next few days) goals and longer term projects that would correct the problems.
Even more info is posted on a status page.
That, I suggest, is how customer relations should be handled.
Barak, Ben and Mena… thanks for not trying to minimize the problems and for taking the time to explain it so well. I’m delighted to be a customer of such an outstanding and upfront outfit. Do it right. I trust you.
