Responsive customer service

Monday, July 8th, 2002

People often ask my why I pay full price for DSL from my small ISP when I could get it cheaper from the ISP I work for. Services offered (eg, static v. dynamic IP addresses) aside, I tell people it’s because small ISPs can provide service and support that simply isn’t possible to get from a large company. Today I have a real life example. It begins over the weekend when I sent e-mail to support asking if they have a NTP server (time server) available to their customers. This is a summary of the e-mail exchange that took place this afternoon. Keep in mind that my e-mails were sent to their general support address, not directly to a sysadmin (who I can communicate with directly if the problem warrants it).
  • From Linkline, To me, 8 July 02, 11:17: No, we do not. Try one of the public ones.
  • From me, To Linkline, 8 July 02, 13:34: May I suggest you set one up? Here’s why.
  • From Linkline, To me, 8 July 02, 13:54: We forwarded this to a sysadmin for consideration.
  • From Linkline, To me, 8 July 02, 14:36: We now have one available, here’s the hostname.
Total elapsed time from my suggestion to it actually existing, DNS record and all: One hour, two minutes.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my site via RSS or e-mail. Thanks for visiting!

File under: ,

Something to say?

  • Fields marked with a * are required.
  • Your e-mail address will not be published or spammed.
  • Allowed HTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> <pre lang="" line="">