[Sitting next to Craig Newmark while waiting for a delayed flight.] I’d heard Craig say in interviews that he was basically just “head of customer service” for Craigslist but I always thought that was a throwaway self-deprecating joke…But sitting next to him, I got a whole new appreciation for what he does. He was going through emails in his inbox, then responding to questions in the craigslist forums, and hopping onto his cellphone about once every ten minutes. Calls were quick and to the point “Hi, this is Craig Newmark from craigslist.org. We are having problems with a customer of your ISP and would like to discuss how we can remedy their bad behavior in our real estate forums”. He was literally chasing down forum spammers one by one, sometimes taking five minutes per problem, sometimes it seemed to take half an hour to get spammers dealt with. He was totally engrossed in his work, looking up IP addresses, answering questions best he could, and doing the kind of thankless work I’d never seen anyone else do with so much enthusiasm.


Matt Haughey explains where he learned to love customer service. [via AD]