[hn_throwaway_99]

Just wanted to say thanks, I think you've given great advice. In particular this bullet point:

> But don't allow issues to go stale. To really wow customer service, reply as humanely quick as possible, especially for existing customers.

As a customer, the absolute worst possible thing for me is to be left in limbo, not knowing if my problem will be fixed in the next minute, hour, day, or never. While I may not be thrilled if the answer is "never", at least at that point I can move on and know that I'll need to solve the problem some other way.

[hermitcrab]

But if you respond consistently quickly, then some lazy customers will email you rather than bothering to look in the documentation. So there can be a downside to being too responsive.