[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What companies have blown you away with thei...
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Ask HN: What companies have blown you away with their customer
support?
I'm curious about stories of excellent customer support because it
seems so rare these days, especially with corporates.
Author : jameal
Score : 21 points
Date : 2023-10-30 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
| bibinvmohan wrote:
| Amazon AWS.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This needs an addendum: AWS support is top notch, _as long as
| your AWS fees are already on the hefty side_. Which makes
| sense.
|
| But also, it can be frustrating to deal with them when it comes
| to anything that's not a clear incident on their part, or
| requires optimization over troubleshooting, e.g. a few years
| ago, we had a few instances underperforming because of higher
| than expected I/O loads and low associated EBS bandwidth, and
| they never gave us a solution for it.
| cuu508 wrote:
| Up until recently, Braintree. In-depth explanations about any
| technical issues (some--of my own making) I ran into or questions
| I had.
|
| The most recent interaction with Braintree support was very weird
| though. I honestly started to suspect I'm talking to an LLM.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| I assume you're looking for bigger companies. I've had plenty of
| great experiences with local companies where the person is likely
| the owner. And I assume you're looking for consistency too -
| almost every company I've had more than just a couple of
| interactions with has had at least one person that did their job
| well from a customer service standpoint.
|
| Here are the most consistent ones though from my experience:
|
| Chick-fil-A, especially when you go inside. And it's not just one
| - it's most of the ones I've visited. Every now and then you'll
| get an employee working the drive through that's not exactly
| pleasant, but still way above the average for fast food.
|
| Publix, a regional southeastern grocery store. Every cashier is
| very nice and pleasant, the stores are clean and well lit, the
| baggers are always there to help you load up.
|
| Amazon, the best customer service is not ever needing customer
| service. Any time I've had a problem it has been because I
| misread or misunderstood the product description, and there has
| never been a problem sending anything back.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Fun fact: Publix is the largest majority employee owned company
| in the US.
|
| https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
|
| (i love publix, no other affiliation)
| tucaz wrote:
| Traders Joe. Everyone is genuinely nice, and look like they want
| to be there doing what they are doing. I know it's not true but
| they make it look like it is.
| dharmab wrote:
| VKB and Virpil for flight simulation hardware.
|
| Monta for Swiss watches.
|
| Isovalent (Cilium CNI) for software.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| I haven't spoken to them in a couple years because I don't work
| for a company that uses Solidworks anymore, but Dassault Systemes
| had fantastic customer support (maybe it was one of their VARs, I
| can't remember).
|
| I became somewhat well-known among their tech support agents for
| having some of the most difficult and creative problems with
| Solidworks. Usually some kind of "I'm trying to bend sheet metal
| in a way that Solidworks doesn't natively support".
|
| They were on-the-ball about RFCs too. I submitted no less than 3
| RFCs and they were all accepted in a more timely manner than I
| hoped for. And they weren't just little nonsense stuff, some of
| them dipped into nasty mathematical theory; sheet metal is
| apparently really difficult to calculate in certain situations.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Southwest Airlines. On more than one occasion, they showed human
| vs corporate levels of empathy and help, and I patronize them
| with mid 5 figures of annual spend in return.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's funny how different and polarizing individual experiences
| can be. My MIL loves SWA for much the same reasons, but they're
| one of the worst airlines in mine.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Amazon.com. They've always provided excellent customer support
| when I've had to deal with tracking / replacing / returning
| items.
|
| Costco - again, fantastic service.
|
| A long time ago I applied to Lucasfilm for a job. I still have
| fond memories of how warm and kind the HR rep was while telling
| me that I was too junior for the role.
|
| Every restaurant I've dined at in Los Angeles - amazing service.
| They treat me like a celebrity (just in case I really am).
| bozhark wrote:
| If it's serviced by Amazon.
|
| You're soof'd if not
| sph wrote:
| I bought something off a third party seller on Amazon. They
| couldn't deliver and cancelled the order.
|
| 6 months later, I noticed I never got my money back. I jump
| on a support chat, and I got refunded, no questions asked.
|
| My interaction with Amazon support has always been stellar,
| and refunded immediately whenever there is a problem with no
| fuss. Once I got a PS500 monitor stolen by the driver, so the
| procedure was a little more complicated, but basically I had
| to sign a document saying I did not steal it nor lie about
| it, and got my money back in less than 10 days.
|
| It feels like they always want to err on the side of the
| customer and that is refreshing to see.
| pjmlp wrote:
| None, sadly.
| bozhark wrote:
| Alaska Airlines Credit Card is a unique one.
|
| Alaska Airlines support has been amazing, unmatched lately.
| Immediately speaking with a person, immediately response and
| actions without the "I hear you" bs and "thank yous" and "we're
| so happy to waste your times".
|
| But it's serviced by BofA. The absolutely worst banking service
| for anything I've ever used. The WORST KYC process ever
| experienced. I'm disabled. They made me physically come in to a
| location very far way, apparently they're now all ATMS with a few
| brick stores. No drive through. The bank manager goes around to
| people standing in line and asks identifying and personal banking
| questions out in the open for everyone the hear and learn.
|
| Cap.One and Amex were amazing though.
| ShuffleBoard wrote:
| T-Mobile is solid all around (>>> AT&T or _shudder_ Verizon), but
| US Consumer Cellular has one of the best customer service
| operations I 've ever dealt with.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Not in my ecperience, although my many interactions with them
| were 10 years ago, so they might have gotten better. It still
| leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
| Clubber wrote:
| Believe it or not, Comcast Business was great back in the day.
| One day my cat puked right on the modem/router, killed it. They
| had a guy out that night with a replacement.
|
| Today, it's terrible. 2-3 day wait. I cancelled them as soon as a
| new provider came to town.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| What town is that, out of interest?
| nonfamous wrote:
| Surprisingly, GE. Apparently they're the only big appliance
| company that maintains a service division in-house. It's easy to
| book a repair, the engineer arrives on time, and they were able
| to successfully repair my 20-year old fridge that would have
| entailed a complete kitchen remodel to replace.
| gameshot911 wrote:
| Charles Schwab. Not only do their (at least checking) products
| have great benefits (like no ATM fees and free international
| transactions), but every time I've called they've been extremely
| helpful.
|
| I once had my debit card canceled due to fraud while traveling
| internationally, and they shipped a replacement via both UPS and
| Fedex to ensure a replacement got to me as quickly as possible.
|
| I have no doubt they've lost money on me as a customer in my
| lifetime, but I have nothing but amazing things to say about them
| and I suspect they'll make it up later in life when I have more
| assets to work with.
| rchaud wrote:
| Start.ca, a regional Internet service provider in Ontario.
| Someone always picked up the phone, and it was always a
| knowledgeable in-house CSR, not some outsourced operation where
| the workers are afraid to lose their jobs if they don't follow
| the script.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Sweetwater - a music equipment retailer
|
| They have, literally, the best customer service experience I've
| ever encountered as a customer.
| grvdrm wrote:
| +1 - they even offer you a sales engineer! And those folks are
| good.
| kylecazar wrote:
| 1800 Contacts has always been really great. Got an updated
| prescription through their digital exam, was approved an hour
| later, and had my contacts recieved in the mail the next day.
|
| Anytime I've had issues they were quickly resolved, and their
| chat actually connects you to a human almost instantly.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I have recently (within the last 18 months) started riding a
| motorcycle. Motorcycle gear is hard to find at retail, which I
| think is pretty common with niche activities at this point. Two
| Internet sites (in the US at least) dominate that sector, and
| turns out they're both owned by the same firm: CycleGear and
| RevZilla.
|
| The former DOES have retail stores, but the latter does not. The
| sites are now similar, but the feel is better at RevZilla, so
| that's MOSTLY where I search and buy. I fully expected the
| customer service to suck either way, though, given that they have
| effectively no competition.
|
| tl;dr? I was _wrong_.
|
| Last year, as it got cooler, I realized I needed a heavier moto
| jacket. I bought one, but the fit was wrong, and the fit was
| wrong in a way that made it clear that just going down a size
| wasn't going to solve the problem. Merlin jackets are just not
| shaped like Ubermonkey, turns out. I called RZ to arrange a
| return, and was ON THE PHONE WITH A REAL HUMAN IN LIKE 6 MINUTES.
|
| And this real human set me up with a return label immediately,
| and then asked if he could help me figure out a replacement. He
| knew the product lines they carried, and understood the styles I
| wanted, and suggested a brand I didn't know but immediately
| clicked with. They credited me immediately for the return (before
| I got off the phone) so at no point was I technically paying them
| for two jackets, even.
|
| I was stunned. Customer service is not dead.
|
| (I looked it up: RevZilla was conceived in 2007 as an online
| provider; CycleGear has always been brick & mortar. The RZ
| founder and a PE group formed a holding company in 201 to own &
| operate both businesses separately. I suspect the fact that an RZ
| founder is still fundamentally in charge is why the RZ service is
| so good.)
| bombardier6789 wrote:
| Coolblue has been amazing for my electronics needs and it's
| customer support.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Notion and Vercel, back in the day. You'd talk to some engineer
| at Notion helpig them file a bug and reproduce it, and a week
| later it'd be fixed. You'd get Guillermo Rausch looking through
| your project on Github to find what's causing Vercel to crash.
|
| Nowadays... you submit a bug to Notion, the support person is
| snarky and tells you "it's supposed to work that way" and a year
| later the bug is still there.
| apelapan wrote:
| I'e been very impressed with my DNS provider, Loopia. For years
| they've been consistently quick to turn around my occasional
| requests for help with stuff not possible in the web UI or that
| requires involvement with the national registrar (myself mixing
| up personal and corporate identities purchasing domains).
| bequanna wrote:
| Progressive for home insurance.
|
| They act as a broker for home insurance. They consistently will
| find the lowest rates, easy to get a phone agent, and have people
| waiting to walk you through the process.
| x0x0 wrote:
| fastmail
|
| I'm a paid account holder, and I've had 2 or 3 email support
| requests over perhaps 10 years. Each time a person actually read
| my request, thought about it, and gave a useful or helpful
| answer. eg in one case, their employee tracked down why search
| wasn't working the way I thought it should, and giving me an
| actual fix to the issue (I had an imported inbox in a subfolder,
| so saying in:Inbox in search wasn't working bec there were two
| folders named Inbox).
|
| A+
| rednerrus wrote:
| https://krakatoaunderwear.com/ The customer support and focus on
| customer experience is worth the couple of extra dollars. Also
| the product feels very well made.
|
| True Classics also has really great customer support in my
| opinion.
| ecounysis wrote:
| Misen Cookware - https://misen.com/ They replaced a couple pans I
| ruined ... no charge. Just had to take a picture of them and send
| it to them.
| 4death4 wrote:
| Cheap Chinese cookware sold for many, many multiples the unit
| cost. It's cool they gave you a new pan though.
| tionis wrote:
| rsync.net I'm not a large customer in any way, but they were very
| accommodating when I had problems
| n_ary wrote:
| Surprisingly Amazon gave me the best customer support on every
| instances. Most issues are just no questions asked refunds. It
| almost felt like they were expecting things to mess up.
|
| Another is QuickBook(Intuit) when I wasn't even their customer,
| the support was utmost helpful(while they had every opportunity
| to tell me to take a hike and talk to my bank).
|
| Worst support so far from insulting to mildly inconvenient in
| that order : eBay, Facebook, Paypal, Discord.
|
| There are some mind blowing support from local businesses which
| won't be recognized, so I will not name any.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Delaware Tax Office. No joke.
|
| I'm not sure what systems they have in place there. I was telling
| my co-founder about my experience with them just yesterday, and
| my experiences have taken place over about 2-3 years, but I've
| had no contact with them in probably 4-5 years.
|
| Every call, the call center people were knowledgeable, friendly,
| helpful. It was a pleasure to call them (which is not what I
| expected at all).
|
| I remember I had a call with them, and had to contact Razer
| directly afterwards because they shipped me 3 faulty computers
| (out of 4 ordered). Razer was brutal to deal with, didn't want to
| help, didn't care, wouldn't do anything for us.
|
| How on earth did a public service get it so right, and a public
| company so wrong?
| graphe wrote:
| Tello, T-Mobile mvno.
|
| American human operators answers my question at any time I had a
| problem, cheap rates, and supports esim. I don't know how they
| can afford real Americans to do CS but I haven't left this
| company which was supposed to be temporary because it's one of
| the CHEAPEST mvnos with AMERICAN OPERATORS?!
|
| HOW?!
| riansanderson wrote:
| Sonic, my local ISP in Northern California https://www.sonic.com/
|
| Tech support people are knowledgeable, pleasant, available, and
| solve any problems I've had. Such a contrast to cable companies
| or wireless providers
| sdfghswe wrote:
| I've only had very good experiences interacting with Chase.
| mission_failed wrote:
| I was most surprised by Australia Post, after reporting a weird
| login issue during the start of Covid when everything was going
| to shit. It was took a couple of weeks before they got to it, but
| I received a couple of phone calls from the same person who
| genuinely wanted to help, who worked internally to identify and
| resolve with their tech teams.
|
| Worst by far has been Nintendo Australia. Switch spontaneously
| stopped charging after being plugged in for a couple of hours.
| Retailer sent it to Nintendo who diagnosed internal damage to the
| usb port (caused by their official charger..), and they would
| only throw it in the bin for free or I had to pay to get the
| broken switch back or pay more for a refurbish. Then they lied
| about their complaints email and gave me their direct address.
| Then sent me a non functional switch back which I had the
| retailer replace on the spot with a brand new one (under Aus law
| this should have been the original solution, but my spouse had to
| drop it off and wasn't aware of consumer rights).
| bjacobt wrote:
| Microsoft, I have a wireless sculpt keyboard + mouse. The mouse
| scroll wheel stopped working 2 years in. I called MS support and
| they sent me a full replacement (keyboard + mouse) at no cost.
|
| Chic-filla - made an online group order for about $60, they
| forgot to include an item of <$10 value. Called and they gave a
| refund for the full order.
| silverlake wrote:
| Baratza coffee grinders. They have a well-deserved reputation in
| the coffee community for excellent customer service. They sell
| replacement parts at very reasonable costs. I've sent them
| pictures of my disassembled grinder and they diagnosed and sent
| out parts immediately.
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