When I launched my previous startup in 2006, I was the only one doing customer support. On the beginning it didn’t matter since I’d get a couple of questions a week, until it grew to dozens of emails a day. There are many things you can do to slow down customer support, but one of the most important is how fast you answer the support questions.
If a customer sends a support question and you answer in 30 seconds, she’s going to go “wow!” You feel good, she feels good, but it’s not good for the business. This customer will realize how quick you are to answer her questions and rely on your support to find out even basic information.
There is the other side of the coin, when you are on the “initial ask” end. Let’s suppose you are discussing with your lawyer a contract. The quicker you are to send him questions or information, the more likely it’s he’ll feel the urgency from your part. Now if you take a couple of days to answer even basic questions, he’ll believe you are not too worried about it, even if you write on the email you are in a hurry.
Back to customer support, I think there are a few issues that you must reply promptly. Those include any customer complaining about availability of the service and customer complaining of some type of security issue. On cases like this, the customer – even if they don’t say it – is honestly having an urgent problem that requires immediate attention. The minimum you can do is to tell them “we are looking at it right now.”
I also think the very basic support questions that are very obvious and very easy should be ignored and not answered. If you get a support email of someone asking how to sign up for your service and there is a huge orange sign up button on the homepage, don’t answer it! Unless you get three people asking the same question in a short span of time, which is likely an indication of a problem on your service.
I think the ideal time-to-answer a support question should be between 1 and 12 hours, never in less than 10 minutes, never more than 24 hours.
I'm the Co-founder & CTO of 
