Cloud Hosting, Branding, and Our New Flex Product

“Cloud hosting” used to be what companies called their services when they needed to impress investors. Now, it’s a term they use when what they really mean is “more virtualization.” Okay. I can live with that — there was a point when people finally stopped referring to scuba gear as a “self-contained, underwater breathing apparatus” as well. In a mixed-up world, I’ll always go to the mat for a little common sense in the way we talk to each other. But let’s be clear: in the hosting industry, “cloud” is still a vaguely understood buzz word — not a well-defined thing.

ServInt spent years being very picky about when you could actually call virtualized hosting “cloud.” Each year, some new vendor would roll out a new “cloud hosting” platform, and our engineers would scoff, in Crocodile Dundee fashion, (“Cloud?! That’s not a cloud!”) at the arrogance of it all. To us, cloud hosting meant radical, meaningful, and — most important — useful changes to the way customers operated their online businesses. By that standard, none of the new “cloud hosting” systems impressed us much. Read more

How to Succeed in the Hosting Industry: Don’t Suck

Man, there are days when I love coming to work.  I wasn’t sure this was going to be one of them, but a new customer changed all that with what may be the best pre-emptive testimonial we’ve ever received.  In his sign-up form, our new customer, whom we’ll call “MW,” took the time to say:

“After my nightmares with (previous host name deleted), I’m going to go out on a limb and pre-emptively say, ‘thank you for not sucking.’”

MW, I want to promise you, right here and now, that we will do everything in our power to not suck.

Wait a minute: scratch that mealy-mouthed marketing nonsense.  Let me say this instead: MW, we will not suck.  We will deliver what we promised you; we will give you an honest return on your hosting dollar; we will meet or exceed any reasonable service or performance expectation you have.  We will be friendly, we will be helpful, and we will know what we’re talking about.  We will never give you any reason to say:  “man, those guys suck.”

Here’s the deal, though:  you can’t suck, either.  You’ll need to work with us as a partner.  You’ll need to keep your server clean and tidy.  You’ll need to make sure your third-party software is up to date, and that your passwords are secure.  You’ll need to have a backup system for your critical data.  You’ll need to describe any performance issues you see in as much detail as possible, so we can help you quickly and effectively.  And if you’re starting to grow too big for your server, you’ll need to upgrade it.

We’re lucky.  We attract customers who realize that reliable hosting requires a little bit of organization on their part.  They’re smart.  They’re friendly and helpful when working with us on a problem.  They’ve got their act together.  They don’t suck.  We treat each other respectfully, and we call many of them friends.  That’s what we’re going to call you, MW.  Not just a client, or a customer, but a friend.  We’re going to help you grow your business, MW.  We’re going to make you glad you chose ServInt.  I promise you:  we will not suck!

Photo by Stewf

Utility-Model Web Hosting? Sounds Great!

About a month ago, I was meeting with the ServInt Marketing team, discussing the fact that — while we have a relatively high proportion of customers who will shout from the mountaintops about how much they love us (thanks, guys!) — the vast majority of our customers are silent throughout the length of their stay with us.

This topic was top of mind for us because we were in the process of designing a full-time staff position dedicated to customer outreach and relationship management — and we were frankly wondering how useful such a position would be if, in fact, people didn’t really want to engage with their web host unless something went wrong.

We began contemplating the possibility that our customers see us the same way they see their electric utility — i.e., they only think of us when their service is interrupted, or when they open their bills each month.

From a marketing perspective – trying to build brand loyalty and attract new business through referrals – this may sound like a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be.  It’s possible to offer a commodity service on a utility model and still have your customers love you — and one sector of the utility industry is particularly good at this.

The American rural electric utility industry is made up of about 1,000 electric cooperatives — small, non-profit, consumer-owned utilities that serve the needs of the 10% of Americans who live in areas largely beyond the reach of investor- or municipally-owned power companies.  Because these co-ops are owned by the households and businesses they serve, an extraordinarily high emphasis is placed on providing impeccable, personalized customer service.

These co-ops invest in community business development, constantly enhance their infrastructure with systemic upgrades, and — despite their small size — are frequently the first in the industry to deliver new technologies that lower costs for their customers.  The result is a peculiar anomaly in the business world:  these are regulated monopolies that enjoy fierce customer allegiance — utility companies that are actually loved and appreciated by their customers.

ServInt isn’t a cooperative.  But it turns out we operate a lot like one:  frequent, free infrastructure and service package upgrades, customer/community-centric decision making, personalized service geared towards making our customers’ businesses succeed — the similarities are striking.  And because of that, I’m not afraid of the similarities between us and the electric utility industry when it comes to customer engagement and feedback.  We love talking to our customers — but a healthy silence can be a good thing when it’s coupled with fierce loyalty.  Bottom line:  if it turns out that web hosting is seen as a utility-grade service these days, at least I know we’ve modeled our business after the right segment of that industry.

Photo by ykanazawa1999

Thank You, Norman Edmund

 

I woke up this morning to the news that Norman Edmund passed away last week at the ripe old age of 95.  To a man whose proudest possession is a 48-inch fresnel lens rescued from a discarded TV, this was like like learning Santa Claus had died.

That’s because Norman Edmund was the founder of Edmund Scientific — the company that sells the coolest science gadgets in the world.

Back in the 20th century, every boy or girl with a nerdy streak (like me) desperately yearned for something — check that:  nearly everything — in the Edmund Scientific catalog.  Edmund sold microscopes, telescopes, gyroscopes, rockets, prisms, lab sets, robot parts, crystal radio kits — even lasers!  The point is, it was all cool stuff, and it was all real.  These weren’t crappy toy versions of science gadgets; they were “lab quality,” and you could actually build, grow, fly, peer through, connect and learn things from them. Read more

The Battle over SOPA and PIPA continues at CES

In a few hours, our COO, Christian Dawson, will be speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This is an important panel discussion involving SOPA and PIPA, but it is also a proud moment for ServInt.

Before I came to ServInt, I spent years in the trenches launching various satellite-powered multimedia technologies — efforts which required me to attend the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each January.

These trips were a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well — and one of the reasons they were so much fun was because we had some of the coolest technology on display.  Trust me, in the early 2000s, satellites were hot, and it was fun being a “satellite guy.”  Our booths were swamped, reporters called us to make interview appointments, and there were few parties to which we weren’t invited.

Despite the fact that we were too cool for school, there was one thing we never got invited to do:  speak at any of the CES sessions.  That was a gig reserved for seriously important people only.  And that’s why ServInt’s presence on the “Infringement, Rogue Websites, and Copyright Crackdowns:  How to Catch Tuna Without Catching Dolphins” panel is such a big deal.

Today, ServInt’s leadership position in the efforts to stop SOPA, PIPA and other flawed anti-piracy legislation is being recognized by having our COO, Christian Dawson — in his role as one of the leading voices of the Save Hosting Coalition — represent the viewpoint of the internet infrastructure industry.

The battle against SOPA is hitting the mainstream, and ServInt is being recognized for all the hard work we’re putting into it. That’s great—but we still need your help. Make sure you follow ServInt on Facebook and Twitter for complete updates on SOPA and PIPA, and please visit savehosting.org to join the battle against this extremely dangerous and misguided legislation.

We’ll keep you posted on how the panel goes.  In the meantime:  break a leg, Christian!

Fritz Stolzenbach is ServInt’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development

Customer Service Series, Part 5: Exceeding Customer Expectations is Stupid

I just got done reading an excellent blog post by Dan Palotta on the Harvard Business Review site.  It’s called “I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore,” and if you’re a lover of words — by which I mean, if you love words enough to care about them and hate seeing them being abused — you’ll definitely want to give it a read.

There was a lot of gold in Dan’s post, but the section that resonated most with me was the following:

Another term that has lost its meaning is “Let’s exceed the customer’s expectations.” Employees who hear it just leave the pep rally, inhabit some kind of temporary dazed intensity, and then go back to doing things exactly the way they did before the speech. Customers almost universally never experience their expectations being met, much less exceeded. How can you exceed the customer’s expectations if you have no idea what those expectations are? I was at a Hilton a few weeks ago. They had taken this absurdity to its logical end. There was a huge sign in the lobby that said, “Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation.” The best way to start would be to take down that bullshit sign that just reminds me, as a customer, how cosmic the gap is between what businesses say and what they do. My expectation is not to have signs around that tell me you want to exceed my expectations.

I admit that the marketing function, of which I am the titular head around these parts, only has a tangential relationship with the process of delivering “customer service.”  But there is one area where we have a measurable impact on the customer experience, and that’s in the area of the things we say and the words we use to say them. Read more

Thinking of Building a New Web Site?

Today, as you may have noticed, ServInt unveiled a brand-new web site — one that we hope will be easier to use, more pleasing to the eye and more valuable to our customers and prospects.

The deployment of our new web site, in and of itself, is probably of modest importance to readers of the ServInt Source. But it occurred to me that sharing details of why and how it was built might be useful, as the challenges we faced before and during the redesign are fairly common ones. So, following are some thoughts, observations, and rules of thumb that may be of use to you:

1. When your customers tell you it’s time for a change, it’s definitely time for a change. Face it: the attractiveness and usefulness of your web site is way down the list of priorities for your customers — so when they take the time to tell you it looks out of date, or is hard to use, it’s probably a bigger problem than you think it is.
2. Building a brand-new web site takes less work than propping up the old one. This one may seem hard to believe, since there is no doubt that the process of building a brand-new web site takes a lot of time and effort. But when you measure both the extra work your company has to undertake on a day-to-day basis to make up for your site’s lack of effectiveness and the big-picture process issues you can fix by implementing a new web site, the value proposition becomes crystal-clear. Bottom line: it’s worth it.
3. Make your web site a mirror facing outwards, as well as inwards. It’s tempting to see your web site solely as a reflection of who you are, or perhaps who you wish you could be. It’s just as important for your web site to accurately reflect who your customers are. Your prospective and current customers need to feel like they’ve arrived at their online home when they arrive at your site — a place where they’re understood and appreciated. Our customer base skews very heavily towards “value purchasers” — people who don’t have time for marketing fluff. That’s why our site was designed with a visibly minimalist style. Our overarching goal was to provide an extremely efficient path towards the information our customers seek.
4. Show, don’t tell. ServInt is fortunate to have a loyal customer base that is willing to tell the world how much they like us, and why. If your customers are similarly willing to compliment you in public — let them. A basic rule of thumb is: if your customers are willing to say nice things about you, there’s no need for you to say those things yourself!
5. Pick a designer who understands you. As mentioned before, we had a clear mental image of what this site was supposed to look like before we started building it. We actively searched for designers who understood the minimalist aesthetic we were after, and why we were seeking it. When we found them, we were able to set them loose to do what they do best. This made things much easier than simply “buying talent” and arguing with them over The Vision Thing. When you and your designer clearly understand the brand strategy you have in mind, as well as the design style that’s going to get you there, you can step back and let them do their job.

We hope you like it!

Cloud Hosting Series, Part 1: A Marketer’s Perspective

 

A few weeks ago, I traveled to San Jose, CA, where I attended the “Cloud Connect” conference. Cloud Connect is basically an annual symposium where the biggest players in the cloud industry gather together to talk about what’s coming next for the Cloud. Analysts opine, accountants report, Fortune 500 CTOs brag, consultants take notes, and those of us who are already deep in the trenches of the virtualized data center industry scratch our heads and wonder how any of this applies to “ordinary” businesses. Read more

Black Hats, White Hats: SEO and JC Penney

A good friend of mine who works for a search engine giant that will not be named tipped me off to two very interesting articles about search engine optimization.  The first is a fascinating New York Times expose (requires registration) of “black hat” SEO tactics used by J.C. Penney to goose their Google search rankings during the recent holiday season. The second is from the popular SEO blog yourseosucks.com, and makes for some very interesting reading as well.

I’ll be honest with you — this story makes me glad that ServInt spends most of its energy building an honest, organic buzz from satisfied customers, rather than manipulating search engine results to make sure we pop up at the top of every Google search. That doesn’t mean we don’t think “white hat” SEO isn’t valuable, or that we shouldn’t always be certain that our web strategy maximizes our search engine opportunities. But I can’t help feeling that the best form of SEO — and I mean that literally — is delivering a product that is so superior that your customers will eagerly spread the word about you online. The question is: how can SEO take maximum advantage of that?

If you’re an SEO expert, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on this. Was the JC Penney event a watershed for the SEO industry? Am I right about old-school “word of mouth” being the best form of SEO? Is there a way to combine killer word-of-mouth buzz with killer SEO strategies? I bet you’ve got some thoughts here, and I really want to hear them. The most compelling insight gets a free round-trip airplane ticket to meet with me in McLean, VA, where we can really discuss things in detail.

Photo by arbyreed

The more things change, the more they should stay the same. Sometimes.

My name is Fritz Stolzenbach, and I’ve been leading marketing and business development efforts at telecom/Internet industry companies like Intelsat, Hughes Network Systems and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative for more than 25 years.

I’ve been integrally involved in the rollout of some pretty cool broadband/rich media products and services over the years, including DIRECTV, HughesNet and the Connexstar enterprise WAN service. I’ve launched dozens of B2B, B2C and Fortune 500-facing products and services in my career, and I’ve run more than a few companies of my own.

Now, I’m starting a new chapter in my professional life, as the Vice President of Marketing at ServInt.

So why am I here? Basically, I’m here at ServInt because I love this company. The people who work here are smart, love what they do, and are easy to work with. But probably the biggest reason why I decided to join ServInt is because I think this company is about to change the face of business-grade web hosting — again. I know this because I’ve spent a lot of time with the mad scientists in the engineering department, the guys on the front lines in the MST — and I’ve had some very long, very interesting conversations with the people who sit in the corner offices here. Bottom line: amazing things are going to be happening at ServInt over the coming months and years, and I want to be a part of them.

One of my priorities is to keep you up to date on the latest developments in the Marketing and Business Development department — so you’ll be hearing more from me as my tenure at ServInt unfolds. Our to-do list is pretty straightforward.

1. We’re going to help design products that meet urgent, real-world requirements of the global business community.
2. We’re going to forge new strategic relationships with companies who can help us deliver the best possible products and services to our customers.
3. We’re going to market and promote our products and services aggressively, but truthfully and with integrity.

In short, we’re going to do everything we can to help this remarkable company reach its fullest potential, while staying true to its roots.

Now — I want to address something that may be on the minds of folks who like things just the way they are. I know that for some service companies, growth can be the kiss of death — and growth is at the core of my job; it’s what I do. Let me assure you that everybody at the executive level in this company is in total agreement: we will not pursue market growth at the expense of service quality. Period.

From my perspective, ServInt’s great market differentiator is the personalized, high-touch service it provides its customers. Losing that advantage would cut my marketing and business development efforts off at the knees — and I can’t afford that. So, don’t worry — nothing will change about the level of service you’re used to receiving from us. We want to grow, and (with your help) we’re going to grow quickly. But, in the ways that are most important to us — the ways that define us as a high-quality customer-care enterprise — we’re going to remain exactly the same.