Kevin Godby

This post is in response to 37signal’s request for stories of your best customer experience.

My best support experience has definitely been with Vircom.

A number of years ago, I worked at a small local ISP. I was the network admin and also handled most of the tech support calls. We used Vircom’s Windows-based email server.

Someone at MCI Worldcom had upgraded the software on their routers and ended up knocking their entire backbone offline. So none of my customers could get on the Internet. I had been on the phone all morning explaining the situation to our understandably upset customers. One of the phone calls I received was from Yves of Vircom. I was subscribed to many of the Vircom discussion lists and he noticed that the messages being sent to me were bouncing.

I immediately apologized for the bounced messages and explained the situation. He understood and informed me that he hadn’t called because the bounced messages were causing him problems, but because he wanted to make sure that our mail server wasn’t the problem.

That’s right: he saw the bounced messages and thought that our email server may be having problems so he called me to offer tech support.