Depending on when you're reading this, you may not be seeing my sidebar. Typepad is currently having a problem with sidebars displaying. I went to file a help ticket and saw the following announcement on the help screen:
By having the "known issues" space, they save both me and them a lot of work. I don't have to file a help ticket b/c they already know about it and they don't have to respond to a bunch of help tickets, diverting their resources from solving the problem.
Well done, Typepad! If more services took this kind of initiative, it would go a long way to addressing some common customer service problems. Now, Typepad also has a Status Blog which is usually up-to-date with any issues. It's actually the first place I checked before I went to the help centre. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated with this issue (although technically Typepad blogs are still up, just degraded). But this kind of ongoing status ping is also super-helpful; my domain and email provider, Domain Direct, have a network and services status page, although it doesn't have a feed which would make it even more helpful. Flickr does something similar - they post outage notices on their blog.
It's all about keeping your customers and your stakeholders informed so that they can take appropriate, informed action. And this, of course, extends beyond software status but to larger corporate communications issues as well.
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