Just Trying to Keep the Customer Satisfied....
Many of you who are reading this run small to mid-size web hosting companies and face similar issues to what we deal with daily at AlphaOne Technology Web Hosting. Others of you run websites that rely on your web host to make sure you are up and running to service your customers. The bottom line is ALL of us want/need to satisfy our customers.Now I don't know about you, but for ME, the most irritating problem I run in to when dealing with a company is not being able to get information that I need in a timely manner. I want to know when my order shipped. As a web hosting company, I want my data center to tell me when they are going to do planned maintenance and upgrades. I want them to tell me what they are doing to fix any technical problems that come up. If I can't get that information I become frustrated and very dissatisfied. Sound familiar? In a survey done back in 2003, over 75% of respondents said that THE most irritating problem they experienced with any company is lack of communication when they needed an issue resolved.
There is no easy solution - especially for web hosting companies. But AlphaOne has begun something that we hope will become a new trend for small to mid-size web hosting companies. A way to keep our customers constantly informed - even if our main server is down - without tying up our tech support line or answering the same trouble ticket or chat request 10 times every hour if there is a problem. Over the past year we have continually improved our methods of serving our customers while keeping our costs down. Large hosting companies outsource their customer service - frequently overseas - to people who mostly can not handle anything but the simplest of questions. Phone support isn't all it is cracked up to be. How often have you ever managed to get telephone customer service from any large company where you weren't forced to wait on hold for a minimum of 5 minutes? My experience is that it is usually more like 20+ minutes - especially in situations where many customers are affected and everyone wants to know what is going on.
There is a much easier, much more cost effective way of making sure your customers can ALWAYS get access to information and support - even if your primary server crashes... Interested? In the next week we will tell you a few of the steps we have taken, and some that are yet to come.
Stop by and visit AlphaOne for a sneak preview!