Know, like and trust in web hosting

[SenseiSteve]

How well do your prospects and clients actually know, like and trust you, your firm and staff? For example, I see a lot of web hosting firms essentially hiding behind their products and services, and specs on their data centers.

When you’re performing research to determine which web hosting provider to go with, should that decision be based entirely on specs and prices? If you’re smart, the answer is a resounding no.

Your thoughts?

 

[Castordor]

We focus on price/quality ratio, too many hosts are selling at high prices but their tech support is not better than the others.

 

[John @ S4]

I think that it is incredibly important to build relationships with clients, we always say that we want to be their partner in making their web presence as great as it can be, and not just sell them a service.

Of course that gets more and more difficult as a company gets bigger, it's easy with 10 customers but not so much with 10,000, but it is not impossible.

As our company is growing we are facing the challenge of keeping personal relationships. So, we assign an 'account manager' to each new client, who will normally be the same main contact person all the time and who will answer their support requests, etc. Of course it doesn't always work out like that, support questions need to be answered as they come in, and if the account manager isn't available then someone else will pick it up.

The other key thing is to make accurate notes on all communication and issues so that whoever does pick up the support request knows enough about the account and the person they are dealing with to be able to be as useful as possible.

 

[Artashes]

I've been following this industry for nearly 20 years. Over these years I've learned first hand what it means to go for specs, prices and overblown promises, having been burnt at least three times by terrible experiences. These hosts were so terrible with customer service that I remember their names to this day. The surprising thing was that in all three instances my gut feeling was telling me to maybe look elsewhere.

It is so important to like the company you want to sign up with. If I were to be giving advice nowadays, I'd say get to know the people running the company before signing up. Beyond just doing your homework and testing them on pre-sales questions, consider having a call with the management, see what they are about, how they built the company, how many employees they have, how they made their choices (in picking a datacenter, for example), what their short and long term plans are, etc. If you don't get the right vibe — move on. If you do connect, the least you can expect is they will certainly remember you as a client.

Ever since I adopted the approach of getting to know the people behind the business, I had the absolute blast working with the providers I've been with.