RangerWickett said:
if you're a business person you need to make sure you don't alienate those customers who expect professionalism.
Good point. However, if professionalism is important to a customer, then they will see better results if they behave professionally to the customer service person. Let's brake this down:
1. Twofalls sends a causally toned email to a (probably very) small company.
2. He receives a causally toned email in replay from someone who's primary job is probably neither customer service or web design.
The second to last sentence in Twofalls' email brings up his hope that he's not the only one complaining. The whole first paragraph of the guy's reply is a response to that. There's no professional way of saying "you're the only one complaining." He should have not responded, but if he didn't want to hear the ugly truth, he shouldn't have brought the subject up.
In fact, had that second-to-last sentence been left out, the response would have been reduced to confusion on the guy's part. Unfortunately, he still doesn't know exactly what Twofalls' had a problem with because Twofalls never clarified.
Only in the world of customer service is a customer allowed to be put off by a causal response to a causal email.
I do want to clarify something: if I were that guy's boss, I'd talk to him about his customer service skills and explain, in no uncertain terms, he's not to treat any customer or potential customer like that.
But I'm not his boss. I'm a potential customer, and his actions don't bother me from a potential customer's point of view.