Customer Service: Free vs. Paid Services

by Allen Stern on November 8th, 2006

In my post in which I rated 10 top new web services customer service, I received several emails mentioning that many of these tools are free to use and thereby should not be required to have good or any customer service. I thought it might be good to get a discussion going around the difference between a tool you pay to use and one that is free.

Let's start by saying that most free web services are sponsored by advertising or other revenue-generating channels. So in essence, these tools are not free, but instead our usage of the tool is paying for our use. I do agree however, that tools that we pay out of pocket for should have additional support beyond the standard, but that all tools should have something. And it is that something that I want to discuss.

First an analogy… If you have a friend watch your baby for free, shouldn't the same care and due diligence be followed as if you paid a babysitter? Should the friend let the kid sit with a dirty diaper because you didn't pay the friend? Naturally the answer is no. Now should the paid babysitter be expected to potentially do more than the friend? Yep. In the eyes of the law, just because you did not pay for a service, does not mean that the service should/can provide little to no service.

I think of a company like Dogster. They replied with a human response in 24 hours to my question about registration. I am not a paying member, I don't even have a free account, yet they replied straight away to my question.

Then I think about a company like Technorati. I hate to keep "picking" on them but they are one of biggest when it comes to the current crop of web apps. I would guess they are bigger than Dogster. Yet when I submitted an inquiry, there was no response. Nothing. Zip. So then I started watching their daily video log, and decided to see if I could somehow communicate with one of the anchors. I was able to find Liz Dunn's flickr profile, and contacted her that way. She was able to get someone in Technorati's customer service to get back to me right away. After I got a help mail from the customer service person, I replied. Again there was no reply for close to 2 weeks. TWO WEEKS! And when Liz sent me an email saying that they are behind and etc, etc., I asked her if anyone would be interested in doing an interview with me to discuss Technorati. Again, it took forever to get a reply. Now, there is a part of me that wants to wait 2 weeks to reply to her, but I am not like that. So alas, I will reply to her. I hope we can get an interview going in the next week or so to discuss Technorati and their views on support and service. It pains me to see a company creating supposed value with things like a vlog when their house is not in order.

So what do I think is valid support for a free or advertising support based service? I think there a few options that are must haves and some that are good to have. (a combination would be best):

Must have:

Community Help Forums – I like Drupal as the example here, a completely free app with no advertising and their support forum is awesome – 85% of the time, someone has helped me (or I have helped) within 12 hours. This can also help you gain valuable knowledge into how your users view your application.
FAQ – This is a must have. As inquiries come in, either through email, forums, etc. Get it up, make sure it is updated frequently. A good job for an intern.
Wiki – This is similar to the FAQ but allows for open editing by service users.

Good to have:

Email support – offer a way for users to email you for help. Make sure you tell them when to expect a response (24/48/72 hours, etc.)
Phone support – most probably can't afford this, but with new services out there, you could have customers leave voicemail messages with questions or comments, and then get back to them. I would consider this to be the best possible level of support.

So you maybe thinking, "So Allen, how we get in touch with CenterNetworks?" There are a few ways: