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dreeves
Author here. Quick summary of the customer support lessons discussed in the post:

    1. Be (really) informal
    2. Be grateful (even to jerks)
    3. Don't just offer help, ask for it
    4. Reply immediately
    5. Avoid going down rabbit holes
I think #3 is the most surprising. It was sort of an epiphany when we figured it out. You can bend over backwards offering help and it makes users feel guilty or suspicious and ignore you. If you ask them for help then they respond effusively, and bend over backwards to help you.

So make explicit in your support replies that asking you questions is not a burden but a vital form of feedback.

fourgone
Great feedback on feedback. I'm a Beeminder customer and I can confirm that support really does run the way the author describes.

My general rule on contacting customer support: Don't.

Perhaps like Joel's Rules for software companies, there should be some kind of customer service certification. Oh well, I can dream, can't I?

See also: http://xkcd.com/806/

dreeves
Ha, yeah, that's the biggest secret to amazing customer support, for as long as you can handle it: have the founders do it.

We have a few non-founders helping us with support but they're quick to say "let me pull in the hackers/founders on this".

nslater
Almost signed off an email to the Beeminder support team with two kisses the other day.

(Not a joke! Fortunately, caught myself before pressing send.)

dreeves
By the "best-friend heuristic", as we say in the post, you should totally go with the kisses.

(I'm pretty sure we'd not have batted an eye at that. :) We're talking about emoticons, right?)