Yeah I am sure there is an emotional reason for it, but I am asking for a cold hearted logic reason.
It's important to recognize that even if you don't see value in being empathetic toward a particularly difficult individual, under different circumstances you are someone else's difficult individual. The paraphrased idiom "treat others as you want to be treated" has existed for thousands of years, for a lot of good reasons.
Though you're second argument is effective in a global community kind of context.
Though, an argument could also be made that being a nicer person is definitely a quality that most organizations would applaud, especially in a customer service position.
It also very much feels like it'd go against the point of being empathetic if the only time it's employed is in beneficial situations.
My reading of the original post was that she already was a customer but couldn't understand that her current problem wasn't actually with Basecamp. And I'm sure you know the stats about the difference in cost between acquiring new vs. retaining existing customers...
That said, one 'cold' reason could be being able to write a post about it that puts the writer and 37 signals in a good light. Another could be for the author to just want to feel better about herself, because she helped someone else and/or because she constructed a nice story (and we humans like stories)...
If your support is good enough, people will even tweet about how amazing you are. It's hard to pay for advertising that effective!
If you're looking for a case study, checkout Zappos history!
So you go the extra mile, find contact info for her host and give it to you, what's the response? Probably "OH now you're pawning me off on someone else?!"
The classic story of customer service is Nordstrom giving a customer a refund on tires (they don't sell tires). But that's an uncomplicated transaction -- 'I went to Nordstrom and they gave me my money back'.
Maybe I'm just being negative, maybe it's from doing phone support in college (explaining an ISP vs. a web host to $5/month customers is not fun) or working retail for years before that... but man, supporting the public is hard and it's really hard to figure out when going the extra mile is a net loss for everyone.
Zappos is great, but I wonder what would happen if I called them for help with my iPhone... ;)
You might be surprised, but the expected result of calling Zappos for help with your iPhone is that they would give it their best shot to be helpful and get it working. There are limits, of course, and I hope you don't try it, but that is how they are trained. At least that is the mantra from Tony Hsieh, in several talks I have listened to over the years.
Tony keeps telling a story about how he was out partying with some friends once, they got home at 2am, and one friend said they'd like to order pizza. "Let's call Zappos and have them get us a pizza!" he suggested. They called Zappos, and the service rep patiently looked up the nearest late night delivery pizza places and gave them the phone numbers. There was a small hesitation to start, but the rep's training kicked in to give world class customer service. And Tony gets to tell that story forever...