Companies with great customer service

I’ve often used this blog as a place to list applications and companies that have angered, annoyed or frustrated me. I would like to think that the (albeit minimal) exposure that my blog has could one day help to drive the changes I, and my commenters, have called for in the apps and companies that I’ve written about. It was never about spreading hate, which is why I always include suggestions for overcoming the described issues, either during or at the end of my articles. It was always about spreading awareness in the hope that these companies would be nudged towards self improvement.

When I woke up this morning I realized that there have been a number of companies recently that have instilled feelings of happiness, surprise and perhaps wonder in me. I think they deserve to be written about even more so than the ones I’ve already discussed thus far. Here is my list of companies that have recently impressed me:

• Scotiabank: a monolith of a company here in Halifax. Every time I find a glitch in their iOS apps or website and report it to them via Twitter I always get a prompt response indicating that they’re working on it. It might take a few months, but eventually I find that thing I commented on has been fixed. Thanks @ScotiabankHelps!
• Telus: Not only are they responsive on Twitter, but they occasionally fulfill support requests entirely via direct message… they once updated my SIM card following only a quick DM conversation. Neat stuff!
• OmniGroup: Their apps are on the expensive side, so you would hope they’ve got great support to accompany them. And they do! Just the other day I sent in an email for a feature request to their iPhone OmniFocus app and got a response in just hours. Their support rep kindly indicated that I was simply looking in the wrong spot for it and that my requested feature exists already after all.
• Plex: A post on their forum with a detailed description of the problem and they’ve usually got a fix ready to go within a couple of weeks. I love it when developers are actively engaged with their community of users, like anyone can see simply by visiting the Plex forums.
• LastPass: I’ve now submit a number of bug reports to these guys and I’ve been constantly surprised at their attentiveness to very specific problems with their password keeping browser plugins. The first time was an obscure issue with niche radio hosting software that blocked my ability to use a portion of it. They investigated closely with the radio hosting software developer and figured out a solution within just a few weeks! I recently sent them a single website that wasn’t behaving nicely with LastPass and  they had that one fixed within a week. Not bad!
  

By no means is this an exhaustive list. It’s all the companies I could think of whose products I have been excited to use as a direct result of the great customer service I received from them. I’ve become a loyal customer of these companies now and it would take a great deal of backtracking on the great customer service they’ve provided up to this point to have me abandon them in the near future. In the end customer service is kind of like a karma system and these guys have built up quite of bit of karma in my books.

Have a company that impressed you recently? Tell me all about it in the comments below!