In my recent column on this site, I've had it with e-mail only customer service, I blasted a rather large software company for providing crappy customer service via their "email only" policy.
Okay, truth be known, there was no customer service at all. But if I'm going to blast companies that do it poorly, I'm also going to praise companies that get it right.
Such is the case with intellicontact.com. This company provides a web-based application for creating, sending, and tracking email newsletters, surveys, and RSS feeds. It came highly recommended, and since I'm making some big changes on my business website, it looked appealing and worth a try.
After signing up for their free 15-day trial I got to work dinking around with their system, as I wanted to try different things in beta testing. Problem: It kept giving me a message that I needed to respond to their email to get the full functionality of the trial. Problem Part II: I never received their "welcome" email with the link to do so.
After searching my junk filter box and even my deleted items box without any luck, I sent intellicontact an email explaining the situation, inquiring how to proceed.
In short order I received a reply email from a customer support person telling me to supply my username and login and she would manually activate the account.
I did.
And here's the magic: Four minutes later I received another email informing me my account had been fully activated.
Now THAT's customer service.
Hats off to intellicontact and all companies like it that are quick to provide quality service to their customers – even if it is by email. (Hey Grisoft, are you taking notes?)