Attitude is key

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
What type of attitude? Of course, I mean the RIGHT attitude sells. Even the “perception” of a poor attitude can sour prospects and clients, leading to increased customer churn and diminished sales. Every contact with a prospect or client is an opportunity, if not immediately, then certainly in 30, 60, 90 days or down the road. Every objection is an opportunity, whether it’s in sales or service and your attitude plays heavily on the outcome.

As web hosting providers

In web hosting, sales and service efforts are largely conducted via telephone conversations, email messages or live chat. Do you present an attitude of “I care about you?” in your written or spoken words? Phrases like, “Thank you for this opportunity to help,” and “What can I do to remedy your problem?” help seal your path to success.

Poor attitudes

On various web hosting forums, I frequently read a good number of threads from members complaining about the poor attitudes of their providers. Some are about billing issues, others about downtime, but overall, it’s simply about being treated professionally and with respect.

While some prospects and clients can go overboard (in a negative way) in their discussions, provoking friction – it’s important to maintain control of the conversation in a positive way. Quite often, you can turn the conversation around by simply saying you understand where they’re coming from, and then calmly explain why your policies, prices or whatever are why they are.

From the prospects and customers point of view

It’s become very clear that prospects and clients want results and not excuses. They don’t want to know what you can’t do, rather what you CAN do for them. They don’t care WHY your network is down. They just want their site online NOW. They expect you to be professional. What they don’t expect, but should, would be for you to put forth a whole lot more effort than your competition. Why? Because so few ever have!! Too many vendors sign up a client and then forget about them unless they complain somewhere down the line.

What's YOUR take on how effective positive attitude is in this industry? Does it really affect customer churn?
 
Do you present an attitude of “I care about you?” in your written or spoken words?

Maybe more importantly than just whether you present that attitude is whether you actually do care.

You should for a couple of reasons...

The vast majority of hosting companies are not very unique, there are a thousand others out there with the same or lower pricing as you, and with the same tech stack, or whatever else you believe your greatest selling point is. If you provide crappy service then your clients can very easily, and should, go elsewhere.

Companies live and die based on their web presence, and if they are entrusting it to you then that puts you in a position of responsibility.

Things do break sometimes, nothing is infallible but if and when it does you should be doing everything in your power to keep your clients aware of the issue, answer their queries and get everything running as it should be as quickly as possible.

Finally, every client has different needs. Some need things that you might not have enabled by default, they have specific setup requirements that you will need to put a little effort into providing. Others will not be as tech-able as you are and will need clear explanations and a little hand-holding.

If you can't cater to all of those needs professionally and with a smile, if you don't actively want to help with any and all of those scenarios, then maybe a business that is highly customer facing and where you will need to deal with support queries on a regular basis is not the best one to be in.

That goes for both company owners/directors and every single member of client facing staff you employ.
 
Definitely seems like this is a problem with some web hosts.

I read one review where a client complained in a ticket about the rudeness/unprofessionalism of the support representative, and threatened to write a bad review, so the support representative responded with something to the effect of, "I'll make sure to write bad reviews on your business too for your rudeness and unprofessionalism."
 
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