Calling up and complaining to your web hosting company doesn’t seem to faze them. Emailing their customer support renders the infamous ‘sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you’ pre-formatted message. You’re experiencing numerous undefined errors. When does the consumer know when the adequate time has arrived to bail on their subpar web hosting company for good? Perhaps only the consumer will know when it’s time to leave their current web hosting company; as experienced web hosting providers, we have plenty of understanding what buttons web hosting companies push to force their customers hand in leaving them for good. Let’s examine the more common issues that feed this:
Errors, Errors, Everywhere!
Companies will promise consumers 100% uptime, full database support, updates to MySQL and whatever else is necessary to reel in the layman. However, when hosting companies balk on these promises, consumers see errors arise in alarming intervals. One great example is excessive 500 (Internal Server) errors which, unless the consumer has control of the server, are nobody’s fault but the hosting company. These errors usually means that servers are down, being reset or experiencing immense traffic increases they’re not equipped to handle. If a hosting company cannot afford enough servers, and has no idea how to segment their customers to a specific server to avoid hang-ups, they’re probably not worthy of your business and it’s time to bail. Some errors are expected in man-made machinery yet not to the point where a business directory is going down nearly every other day.
Operator, Where Art Thou?
Calling your web hosting company shouldn’t be comparable to phoning your in-laws; getting someone to answer promptly, adhere to your needs, understand the issue you’re calling about and having a quick resolute for the situation shouldn’t be an awestricken process for the consumer who just paid good money to park their website on your server. Once the consumer realizes subprime customer service personnel exist within the confines of the web hosting company, it’s sayonara for them, guaranteed.
Hey, I Thought Your Contract Said…
Most consumers will admit their eyes won’t squint long enough to read the ‘fine print’ within hosting contracts; however, a select few will definitely comb the T’s and C’s for anything advantageous or promised to them upon completion of payment. Once services start changing, getting downgraded or websites start to run slower than advertised, customers will become slightly apprehensive to renew and may consider backing out immediately while attempting to recuperate their monetary losses.
DirecTV Nailed It
The humorous commercials that DirecTV puts out may seem like ‘joking advertisement’, yet an underlying message exists within their script: customers who are forced to wait, get promised timely customer support or have signed up for something should get what was promised and, at the end of the day, will go elsewhere to competitor companies until their satisfactions are fully guaranteed. In order to retain customers in web hosting, the company needs to know what they can offer and match it to what they’re advertising if any hope of long-term customer retention is desired. The best web hosting companies understand how to keep customers happy by studying the reasons they’ve become dissatisfied.
