Customer Support is Key

This should be a no-brainer, I know. Unfortunately it is not. It is incredible the amount of large and reputable companies out there that have poor customer support.

A couple of weeks ago I was purchasing a domain name via a renowned company. I made the payment (it was over $1,000), received confirmation of the payment, and then I was left waiting for the transfer process to begin. I started the transaction on Saturday, so I knew that perhaps they would not be working on the weekend (although they should; this is the Internet!).

Monday and Tuesday passed, and still I had not heard back from them. At this point you can imagine that I was starting to feel uneasy. Not because I was fearing they would fail to deliver the domain, but because I really needed to have control over it as soon as possible to start building the website.

I then wrote an email to the manager that was responsible for my transaction, asking if he had any updates. Sometimes you don’t even expect that they fix the problem immediately, but you want to know what they are doing to solve it, what information and previsions they have and so on. That was my case.

I would be happy as long as he promptly emailed me back saying: “We’re working on it, it should require another day or two.”

But that did not happen. He just replied to my email on the next day, after 30 hours or so.

I mean, are you kidding me? One of the largest domain dealers on the Internet takes 30 hours to reply to a customer’s email?

Needless to say that I was pretty unhappy with the overall experience, and I will think twice before purchasing another domain with them.

Now, remember that this point applies to virtually any company or business entity, including your websites, freelance business or blog. Your readers are your customers, after all. Take 30 hours to answer to their comments or emails and I am sure that they will think twice before coming back.