Zoho's customer service is ridiculous.

Posted by a user on a Zoho feedback forum, July 10th, 3:46am:

I have wasted hours and hours over the past two days with your awful service. Initally, it looked quite promising for a simple, single form application. After it was all set up, disaster. A simple script stopped working (it worked yesterday) and all hell broke loose. Data items couldn't be deleted or accessed. I started over with a new application. Every time I tried to put in a lookup field, the application began spitting servlet errors. I couldn't even get access to the script any longer. Everyone on the phone at support said things were running smoothly. In the end, I created and deleted THREE accounts. The service slowed to a grinding halt and eventually I couldn't even login without a 10 minutes of watching the Firefox balls go round.

If these are the service levels you are aiming at, good luck.

AWFUL.

Posted by the same user, 21 hours later:

I want to thank you very, very much for all your help. I had the whole development team call me today from India. Despite a horrible cell phone connection on my part, they patiently listened to the issues and addressed every one. I am really impressed and look forward to a "beautiful relationship" from now on.

Food for thought: seven of the first 10 results of a Google search for "Dell customer service" are complaint-related. I gripe about Dell and I've never even bought one.

What are Zoho's tactics?

I sent their support team an email with a simple question.

The next day, I received several paragraphs from a guy who repeatedly used my first name, included a personal anecdote related to my inquiry, and offered help that I didn't even ask for.

I was torn between asking him to marry me, and asking him if Zoho would grant me three wishes under the condition that I can't ask for more wishes and I won't use them for evil.

The most striking thing is that the enraged user above and I were both using one of Zoho's (numerous, shockingly good) free services.

I'm not someone who likes to tout products or services. They seem invariably linked to five-year-olds in sweatshops or shitty copyright policies.

But I'm touting Zoho. Best customer service ever. Online or off.

Dell take notice!