Why Support Makes Me Happy
25-Nov-02
Requests like this one are the reason I do support. Here we have a user who is about to have a pretty big upheaval in her life. She is going to move. She is going to lose her Internet access. She is worried about losing her journal and wants to know how long her account can be inactive before we’ll delete it.
And the answer is wonderful. The answer tells her “Don’t worry– we will be here when you get back, and so will your journal.” The answer says “Don’t forget your password, because we want you to be able to login again when you return to us.”
I love it when what the user wants is not only possible, but easy for them to do. I love it when they ask about something that concerns them, and we tell them that there is no way it’s going to be a problem. I love it when my answer (or any support answer, but especially mine, to be honest) not only answers the question they had (how long before it gets deleted), but also lays to rest the underlying fear (that their journal will go away when they’re offline).
Sigh. 
Now I wish I’d also said “And when you get back, if you’ve kept a journal off-line, you can post your entries backdated to put them in on the appropriate days. . . .”