How To Respond To Customer Inquiries

How easy do you make it for your customers to ask questions? How quickly and how well do you respond to your customer inquiries?

We use Basecamp for project management at Miles & Company. It has about a gazillion features, but we only use around a dozen, and it works just great for us. The other day at my favorite coffee shop, I was thinking how great it would be if I could send email to Basecamp for a particular project and just have it live there until I needed it.

So I made a customer inquiry.  I asked Basecamp (a product from 37 Signals), via Twitter, when that feature would be available.

They got right back with an answer.

#daymade #mindblown

They could have scolded me or made me feel foolish for not understanding all the features they have. They did not.

They could have talked down to me and carefully explained the feature and how easy it was to use. They did not.

They could have neglected my answer and not gotten back to me, or simply delayed answering until I forgot about it. They did not.

Nope.

They answered my question simply, politely, and immediately. And they did it via the media tool I had used to ask my question.

Can you say the same?

(We pay a monthly fee to Basecamp and have not been compensated in any way – except through their extraordinary customer service, which they afford every subscriber.)