A good, logical reason to be empathetic in all situations would be to help yourself. If you needlessly act negative toward another person, you will be more inclined to be negative about similar situations in the future. You are essentially training yourself to be negative which, I can assure you, bleeds into the rest of your life.

It's important to recognize that even if you don't see value in being empathetic toward a particularly difficult individual, under different circumstances you are someone else's difficult individual. The paraphrased idiom "treat others as you want to be treated" has existed for thousands of years, for a lot of good reasons.

I've got a real-world example of that. Many years ago, I was an easily-angered driver. Once on the way to work, someone cut in front of me. I honked, and flipped off the driver as I passed. A few minutes later, pulling into work, that car was pulling into the same parking lot. Come to find out she was one of the directors at the company I worked for. I don't think I ever flipped off another car since then.

That first argument is unlikely to convince someone coming from a cold hard logic standpoint. Coming from a cold hard logic standpoint, that person is going to act in their best interest/companies best interest in all cases (or so the theory goes). I understand where you're coming from, but "Be nice to everyone to train yourself to be nice" isn't the optimal path from the companies perspective.

Though you're second argument is effective in a global community kind of context.

I agree that it is likely not a logical reason from the perspective of a company. I was simply providing a logical reason, in general.

Though, an argument could also be made that being a nicer person is definitely a quality that most organizations would applaud, especially in a customer service position.

It's quite logical to practice one of the most important human communication skills at every opportunity possible. Practice makes perfect, and will hone the skill for use in situations where it will lead to direct benefits. If something isn't practiced, it can backfire when employed incorrectly.

It also very much feels like it'd go against the point of being empathetic if the only time it's employed is in beneficial situations.

>They are unlikely to become customers

My reading of the original post was that she already was a customer but couldn't understand that her current problem wasn't actually with Basecamp. And I'm sure you know the stats about the difference in cost between acquiring new vs. retaining existing customers...

I suppose there's a lot we wouldn't do if we apply cold hearted logical reasons. Sometimes it's nice to not apply cold hearted logical reasons (even though I do see your point).

That said, one 'cold' reason could be being able to write a post about it that puts the writer and 37 signals in a good light. Another could be for the author to just want to feel better about herself, because she helped someone else and/or because she constructed a nice story (and we humans like stories)...

Support requests should be treated as opportunities to make a positive brand experience. Even if this person doesn't become a high paying customer, they might become an advocate. Perhaps they overhear a conversation about your product and say - oh I know <company> - they are so friendly and helpful!

If your support is good enough, people will even tweet about how amazing you are. It's hard to pay for advertising that effective!

If you're looking for a case study, checkout Zappos history!

Would that customer even know what she's advocating? I bet she'd end up advocating her hosting company, not 37sig.

So you go the extra mile, find contact info for her host and give it to you, what's the response? Probably "OH now you're pawning me off on someone else?!"

The classic story of customer service is Nordstrom giving a customer a refund on tires (they don't sell tires). But that's an uncomplicated transaction -- 'I went to Nordstrom and they gave me my money back'.

Maybe I'm just being negative, maybe it's from doing phone support in college (explaining an ISP vs. a web host to $5/month customers is not fun) or working retail for years before that... but man, supporting the public is hard and it's really hard to figure out when going the extra mile is a net loss for everyone.

Zappos is great, but I wonder what would happen if I called them for help with my iPhone... ;)

>Zappos is great, but I wonder what would happen if I called them for help with my iPhone... ;)

You might be surprised, but the expected result of calling Zappos for help with your iPhone is that they would give it their best shot to be helpful and get it working. There are limits, of course, and I hope you don't try it, but that is how they are trained. At least that is the mantra from Tony Hsieh, in several talks I have listened to over the years.

Tony keeps telling a story about how he was out partying with some friends once, they got home at 2am, and one friend said they'd like to order pizza. "Let's call Zappos and have them get us a pizza!" he suggested. They called Zappos, and the service rep patiently looked up the nearest late night delivery pizza places and gave them the phone numbers. There was a small hesitation to start, but the rep's training kicked in to give world class customer service. And Tony gets to tell that story forever...

And if everyone called Zappos for them to do their dirty work it literally wouldnt work. This is only possible because it is the exception, not the rule.