I have to admit, this is good. Story goes, a woman orders several shoes from Zappos for her mom, mom dies, and Zappos pays to pickup the shoes, arranges UPS to come out and get them and then sends flowers and a card. Wow. Can you say customer for life? Read the actual blog.

When Merge was at sxsw last year, we heard the founder of Zappos speak. The blog post above fits very much into their philosophy, as he explained it. Really, really good customer support. Extraordinary-in the true sense of the word-customer support.

It’s so refreshing when that is your experience. And with that said, I want to share a similar experience. Merge uses Rackspace to manage its servers. I’ve often joked that I want to name my third (now fourth) kid after Rackspace. Their slogan is “Fanatical Support.” They’re one of those few companies, like Zappos, that actually lives up to the hype.

Actually, it’s not hype, it’s what they do.

Rackspace can be reached any time of the day, 24/7, 52 weeks out of the year. Their support is spot-on, and often they have any problems solved before I even know about it. They are fanatical. If you have to hire a company for something, don’t you want them to be fanatical about their service?

How you ‘doing?