Improving customer Loyalty in Web Hosting

Let’s face it – a lot of companies sell very similar products and services. And this is particularly true in the web hosting market. Simply do a search for “shared web hosting” and up comes a seemingly endless list of companies whose offers might satisfy your needs. There’s really nothing in it – many companies offer an infinite number of websites, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, and 24/7 service.  If this somehow separates them from the next “unlimited” business in list.

As someone who has been in the field of the Internet for over 2 decades. Many people who use web hosting companies. While people often seem delighted to be having a chance to bitch about their web hosts. Others are fascinatingly loyal to their providers. It’s almost like there’s a sense of pride in the fact they’ve found a web host that offers the kind of service that people want.

Whether this is generally an accusation by the web hosting industry, I don’t know, but I can tell you what people who are happy with their hosts have told me. Here’s a list of the comments they made comments you might want to think about if you want to make your web hosting company special from the next one. As you can see, a lot of that is about customer service.

• They offer a good customer experience

Some studies show that customers with a company’s best customer experience will pay about 150 per cent more than a customer who got the worst customer experience with the same company. That is a lot and bad news travels faster than good news, of course. Good customer experience means registration forms work, pages load fast, and information is easily accessible. Good customer experience means a customer receives payment requests in a timely manner. The email they receive provides a one-click experience which leads directly to the page they need to pay for a service again. In short, for a customer, everything is make it  as easy as possible so that they can do what they need to do when they need to do it and execution is effortless.

Even though everything are to be common sense, the fact that people complain in this fashion suggests that businesses find it difficult to find common sense. Costs obviously involved. But the words I’ve written reflect what I’ve learned repeatedly. More margins? Possibly, indeed. But it must be where web hosting companies returning customers are at.

• There’s continuity

Once an inappropriate email reply has been receive, people write back to their web hosting companies. And whereas they were originally dealing with “Susan”, they are now dealing with “Sarah” who would like to know “How can I help you?” . As a result, the same issue must be explained again, and if it is not resolve. The chances are that even more people must get involve to address an issue, raising blood pressure and making tempers boil over. Companies with the top marks appear to have allocate customers to certain staff. This is meaning there is at least a chance support staff can remember the original issue as it was initially raise.

• They answer the phone

Perhaps some of the most prolific complainants gave expletive-laden accounts of being told their call is urgent. This is  being told “all our operators are busy–please hold on” and being stuck in an ad infinitum telephone queue. I don’t know whether they’re tales of fishermen, but people have told me they’ve been on hold for up to 2 hours at a time. My record is around 45 minutes. Offering support to people 24/7 is nothing more than a cruel joke. If someone is actually place in a Kafkaesque maze of pressing numbers only to be taken back to the beginning of a cycle and to have to listen to the same song forever. It really does make a lasting impression when people respond to the phone quickly!

• They answer emails

From what people say, they call a web hosting company. When they haven’t been able to get what they want from an email enquiry. Almost invariably people get an immediate auto response which explains someone will be in contact shortly. Some of the follow up times I have experienced from web hosts are genuinely appalling, and it seems I am not alone. Without exaggeration, weeks can pass without an email response from some companies, and when one comes, there’s not even an apology for the delay. Obviously, people are happy when responses are given in a timely fashion.

• They read emails

Ranking up with phone and email delays is the fact that their queries have not been properly read when people get email responses. And the only relationship answers to the questions originally asked are that they both involve web hosting. It seems like people are too busy (too stress?) in the age of the Call Center to even consider a proper answer to a query. Support staff tend to read only keywords in an email. And dump a link to a video or information page in a response that has practically nothing to do with what you’re inquiring about.

• When they don’t know the answer, they don’t just make things up

I once asked a company why my credit card was charge in respect of a service due the following month for repayment. The answer was that it charges payments up to a month in advance.

However, the Terms of Service provide by the provider suggest payments were made 10 days prior to a due date. Instead of receiving an apology, once this is point out, I get the same email that I sent before with “10 days” add where “one month” was previously. Obviously, this didn’t address exactly the issue that I had raise. In general, companies with top marks give “Can I look into this for you?” As a reply and then a proper fashion follow-up.

• They appreciate my custom

The problem with web hosting customers is that they became invisible. This is because their websites are up and running, and there are no issues. Some people I’ve know have been web hosting clients for several years. And except for the occasional email offering a seasonal discount on domain names, that’s all they’ve ever heard from their web host (except when payment is due, of course). The people who were happiest with their web providers have regular contact with their businesses.  That kind of thing. It does matter. People are talking about it.