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

Customer Service Series, Part 4: Customer Service as Customer Outreach

Most customer service in web hosting is a reactive business. Departments train up staff and wait for the calls and tickets to come in. But as our Director of Managed Services, Jim Tricarico, said in a recent blog post, there is more to customer service than simply customer support. At ServInt, we believe that proactive customer outreach is an integral part of customer service.

Excellent customer service doesn’t just cover technical issues or sales inquiries. It extends out to billing questions, partner programs, product information inquiries, and all points in between. And the only way to accomplish this is with a proactive customer outreach program.

As ServInt’s Customer Relationship Manager, it’s my job to oversee the customer interactions beyond sales and tech support. My goal is simple: to let customers know we care about them and their quality of service, and to let them know that we’re here to listen.

In order to create a warm, family-like environment in my interaction with customers, I make sure to keep a few things in mind:

Lauren’s Guide to Customer Outreach

1. Create an open door feeling for customers. No question is a dumb question! Establishing that with our customers is very important. I want them to feel like they can pick up the phone or shoot me an email any time, regardless of the issue. Making sure our customers feel comfortable allows us to quickly open the lines of communication and create an open dialogue.
2. Stay away from canned or generic responses. Customer outreach, by its very nature, deals with highly specific concerns. Crafting an organic response for each concern shows customers that you made time for them, you care about getting them the correct information, and that you will touch on every single point of their question.
3. Pick up the phone vs. replying by email. A phone call goes a long way. Of course, not all circumstances warrant a phone call. And technical issues are typically better communicated through written means. But when building customer relationships, a phone call sure is a nice gesture and should be used on more difficult issues. Picking up the phone shows the customer that we really are human and don’t just exist in cyber world. Also, talking on the phone can help clear up any confusion that could arise from emailing messages back and forth.
4. Recognize the customer as a person. They should never just be looked at as a billable unit. Customer appreciation results in customer satisfaction.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer for help. I’ve had many conversations with our customers where I’ve actually turned the tables and asked them questions. Ask them about their industry, about their specific needs for your products. More often than not, people love to share insights into their areas of expertise.
6. Always show compassion towards the customer.  Showing them that you care will go a long way. Being able to understand and relate to the customer will build trust and loyalty.
7. Customer outreach is a means of increasing customer “stickiness”, but it is not a Sales or Marketing Function. Focus on building relationships, not on an endgame.

SOPA, PIPA and the Fight to Save the Internet

Yesterday I got to be part of something huge. I spent the day on Capitol Hill as an advocate for small business on the Internet, and met with Congressmen and Hill staffers to discuss the impact of two pieces of legislation currently making their way through Congress: the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. And today I get to report huge progress in our fight to protect a fair, competitive Internet in America.

As the story is always told, it’s impossible to beat big money in politics, and SOPA and PIPA are most definitely backed by big money — very big money. But with no funding whatsoever, we have been able to get our message across, and we’ve been able to bounce a few painful rocks off of Goliath’s noggin on this one. He hasn’t fallen over yet, but we managed to get him reeling a little.  For those who want the breaking news, I’ll cut to the chase right away.

The status of PIPA, as of yesterday, was that it was likely to pass in the Senate if it were allowed to come up for a vote, but that Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was holding it up through procedural means, something he couldn’t keep up alone forever. Yesterday, among the people we addressed were Senator Jerry Moran (R – KS) and senior staffers for Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA). We explained our major concerns about what PIPA would do to the Internet economy. Sen. Moran was a former sponsor of PIPA, but he listened intently to our concerns. Today I am extremely proud to announce that Moran, Cantwell — as well as Senator Rand Paul (R – KY) — have issued a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joining Ron Wyden in his hold on allowing PIPA to come to a vote in the Senate. That doesn’t end our battle, but it is a huge bipartisan step in the right direction!

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The Tech Bench: Controlling spam and mistakenly blacklisted IPs

Editor’s Note: For this week’s Tech Bench, we thought we’d share the particulars of a recent MST ticket. If you’ve ever struggled with administering email  for clients over your VPS, this is one’s for you.

 

Recently, a customer submitted a ticket to the MST asking for help with the email on his VPS. It quickly came to the attention of our Director of Network Compliance, Mike Witty, when the customer explained that all email going through the mail delivery IP address on his server was being blocked by AOL, Gmail and AT&T.

The reason given by the email services for blocking his IP address was that it was a suspected source of spam. Yet the customer was in contact with all the users on his VPS and knew that they were not sending out spam.

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The Power of Social Media, or Do You Give a $#!% About Your Web Host?

If you follow ServInt on Twitter, you may have noticed a strange surge in profanity-laced tweeting coming from us and many of your fellow customers—and you may have wondered, what the $%#@! is going on here?

The honest answer is, we’re not entirely sure yet.

Let me explain. About a month ago, I was in a 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 as customers.

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.

In any case, as we sat there contemplating the depressing possibility that our customers might actually see hosting like they see the electric company (i.e.: the only time you think about the electric company is when the lights go out) somebody blurted out:  “What we really need to know is, does anybody actually give a $#!% about their web host?” There was a burst of laughter, but in the silence that followed somebody said, “We should just ask them.”

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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!

Zen and the Art of Taking Risks

Ready. Fire. Aim. Repeat.

That’s right — I said “Ready. Fire” — and then aim.  Then start over.

For those of you who’ve read a business management book in the past decade or so, this might not be a new concept. But for those who are just getting their sea-legs as a small business, it’s the kind of advice that can save your business, too.

What “Ready. Fire. Aim.” really signifies is the growing prominence of beta culture within many tech companies. Whether it’s marketing, sales, or development, our beta culture — and the risks we take with each new release — speed up things like research and development while ultimately making a release better.

If you’re developing a product or service, getting something together that people can see and try as soon as possible is the best thing you can do. If your product sucks, tell them not to bet their business on it yet. Be truthful and set expectations properly — but for goodness sake show them something!

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ServInt Answers: What Does “Network Compliance” Mean?

Hi, I’m Mike Witty, ServInt’s new Director of Network Compliance.

To those outside of our industry, the words “Network Compliance” probably sound a bit cryptic – even bureaucratic.  But network compliance actually affects every single customer we have.  I’d like to take this opportunity to explain how, and why.

First, a little about me. I’ve been at ServInt for more than ten years now — roughly 100 years in Internet time. I first cut my teeth as a member of ServInt’s Managed Services Team and worked my way up to management from there. Over the years, I’ve seen our service offerings evolve dramatically, and it’s been an exciting ride.

When I started here in 2000, the vast majority of the content on the Internet was static – basically little strings of HTML.  These sites rarely broke on their own, if ever. Since then, there have been seismic shifts in web technology and there is a constant race to remain up-to-date and competitive.

But, as always, there’s a tradeoff.  For every internet app that changes our lives for the better, there’s a new security concern, and a new way for the bad guys to reach out and cause trouble.  As head of ServInt’s Network Compliance Team, my job is to protect and defend our customers, content creators, and ServInt as a whole, to the best of our ability. Here are just a few of the challenges my team and I face daily and some tips on how to avoid becoming a victim.
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3 Lessons We Can Learn from the Resurrection of Palm

If you follow the tech industry, it was hard to miss HP’s recent acquisition of Palm, Inc.

The Sunnyvale based smartphone maker was in serious trouble after its seemingly meteoric rise from a very similar grave in January of last year. Palm was on the ropes, its wonderful webOS platform overshadowed by ineffective marketing and distribution. The company’s audacious reentry into a space dominated by Google, RIM, and Apple seemed to be a lost cause.

Then HP, probably the most bland hardware manufacturer in the world, came to the rescue. The marriage of the two seems like the perfect solution, Palm will invigorate the stale HP brand with a fresh new mobile operating system that is light years ahead of HP’s own offerings, and HP provides the firm with the financial footing and market share to take some serious – and expensive – risks.

So what can small online businesses learn from this soap opera? Here are a few things that stuck out for me.

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The Living Room of Rock & Roll: A look Inside Swing House Studios

Editors Note: This is part of our ongoing series of customer profiles right here on the ServInt Source. Want to take part? Tell us your story!

At first glance, there don’t seem to be many parallels between sound recording and webhosting. Indeed, we thought the same thing before we visited Swing House Studios in Hollywood, CA earlier this year. But by the end of our visit, we walked away convinced that Swing House and ServInt were natural partners and we’re ecstatic to have them aboard.

For music recording studios like Swing House, and for webhosting companies like ServInt, relationships are the most critical part of our business. As Swing House founder and President Phil Jauriqui is fond of saying, “If Hollywood is the home of Rock & Roll, then Swing House is it’s living room.” It’s that sense of intimacy that makes them so compelling.

The studio is unpretentious and nonchalant, it knows it’s there to simply facilitate the creation of great music. Each rehearsal room looks and feels lived in. Littered with equipment and style, the facility feels like you’ve stepped into a copy of Rolling Stone Magazine.

With that being said, it’s not surprising that Swing House has recorded some of the biggest names in the business for over 16 years. Despite their esteemed clients like Nine Inch Nails, Ziggy Marley, and Ross Rubin, Swing House also welcomes artists just starting out. Artists from all over the world and from all walks of life have laid tracks there and the studio shows no signs of letting up. As we said in the profile on our homepage, Swing House is a company that lives, breathes, and bleeds rock and roll.

They don’t just confine themselves to the studio either. Whether they’re throwing amazing parties at South By Southwest or diving first hand into the Sunset Strip Music Festival in Hollywood, Swing House is first and foremost about music.

Anyway, the most striking thing about their facility is just how amazing it looks. Descriptions don’t do it justice so we snapped a few photos of their rehearsal rooms, sound stage, equipment, and even their intimidatingly cool entranceway!

Check out the gallery below, and take a look at their site, hosted by ServInt, here!

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