Parts

In my last post a few days ago, I told you a little bit about our history of service issues and what we have and are doing to improve it.

I wanted to thank everyone for your outstanding feedback on my last post. We are working on all mentioned issues and I will reply in detail (as a comment to this post) what we are doing about all of it.

It’s exciting to discuss all the opportunities we have to do better for you and on that note, I want to share our idea on what kind of customer service you can expect from us in the future.

Create a “Wow!” Customer Service Experience for you. Always. By the end of the year, we will transform our customer service team into delivering “Wow!” every time you call, email or chat with us. In detail, we will give you…

1. Your own ‘Personal Hero’. A personal and fully accountable contact at our company who will be responsible to ensure your satisfaction at all times. You’ll know him/her by name. Your Hero will know everything about you and your objectives for your website. He or she will be heroically interested in what you are trying to achieve and what obstacles you’re facing so that he or she can blow them away. And every one of them will do everything in their Hero Special-Power to make your website successful (and we are making sure they have plenty of manna to do so).

2. You can help replenishing your Hero’s manna by sending in raving testimonials. I believe they also accept candy of all kinds. In fact, they prefer the latter, but I personally prefer the first. To be on the safe side, you could also do both.*

3. You’ll be able to talk to your Hero in all fashionable, not-so fashionable and even unfathomable ways: On the phone (they feel special if you call them on their hero (cell) phone), via chat, ,   (MySpace is against our Heroes’ core values), any instant messenger (including ) and if you really have to, via email (totally unhero-ish). Or if you prefer , that works too. Webcam? No problem, your Hero is very personal and loves talking face-to-face. Or in person – visit us for a local get together.

4. By the way, don’t be freaked out. Occasionally, your Hero will call you just to ask how you’re doing and if there is anything they could iron-out or make go-away for you. And maybe if he or she can make your day brighter today. We promise there are no other intentions. (There is also no ulterior motive for making this a separate point for no reason at all.)

5. A company blog (you’re reading it). This place will soon be filled with stuff that you can really use to grow your website, Increase Traffic and eXplode Sales. You really can use a website to make a lot of money. That’s what I did with IX Web Hosting. I’ll show you how you can, too.

6. A status blog, featuring posts and your comments about any current and past service issues that warrant special attention. This is already online but not yet at its fullest capacity. We’re still working out the quirks.

7. A customer forum and comm-YOU-nity. This will be a place of vivid discussion among all of you and all of our Heroes. Participate, experience and learn about how to use your website to its fullest capacity (= how to Increase Traffic for your personal site, or how to eXplode Sales and impact your business).

8. A customer-wiki that your Heroes and you will co-create. Any content you think is worthwhile mentioning can published here and shared among our entire customer base. All of the Internet, even.

9. A presence on (up and running!),  and all the other places you’d expect us to be but we’ve failed to appear so far. Our Army of Heroes will soon appear e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e…

I’m hopeful that these upcoming changes will, umm… I don’t know! Create some kind of excitement for you?

Please don’t hesitate to leave your comments and let us know what you think. Criticism, suggestions, new ideas – anything that’s on your mind, please share it with us! Your feedback will allow us to change our plans and make sure we do less of what you don’t need, and a lot more of what you do! So what do you think about our heroic ideas? Did we miss something?

And now that you know there will be Heroes who will teach your site how to fly, let me share the most significant change that is coming:

We would like to make your success our only focus. Specifically, this means…

1. A Customer Advisory Board. We’d like to hear from you often, in fact, we can’t hear from you often enough. Sometimes, even with our new Heroic and Wow! customer service approach, we may still miss what’s important to you. This could be a new feature that we should offer, a whole new kind of product or just supporting you in a different way. I’d like to establish a method that will allow us to always stay in touch with you and listen to your feedback. I’ll follow up soon with several ideas how this could work exactly.In the meantime, do you have any ideas on how best we can make this happen?
2. Frequent face-to-face meetings, between you and anyone of our staff. Anytime one of our managers, Heroes or Technologists travels (and some of our staff practically live on the plane!), they would love to meet you in person. To talk about your business or work situation, how an improved website and more traffic can lead to advancements for your business and career (and how to do that!), and of course to get your feedback about how we’re doing and what we could be doing better… or we can just hang out! Atlanta and Chicago are coming up next on our travel schedule. Anyone interested?
3. Show you how to Increase Traffic and eXplode Sales, or IX, for short. We know exactly how powerful a website can be. After all, we’ve built our entire company – a hundreds of employees strong organization – on just that. How interested are you in a course, or possibly a monthly digital and printed newsletter, that teaches you how to use your website to your advantage for both your business and you personally, in easy-to-understand language?

A few ideas that come to my mind: how to build a website that sells, how to get your website listed on popular search engines (mostly: Google), how to successfully advertise online, what an affiliate program is and how to use it to your benefit? How to use your website to find a better paying job or advance your career? How to make your website more popular by means of Social Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing, and integrate core functionality such as forums, wikis, blogs and other interactive community elements? This list could go on forever…

But what are you most interested in? Please let us know.

We have a very full plate in front of us, but we will never be too busy to listen to your feedback. It is golden. Please keep it coming.

Thank you for being our customer.

Fathi Said, CEO
IX Web Hosting

PS: This blog post contains several ideas that you could try out in your business or at your workplace to improve your company’s service and relevance. Feel free to quote any part of this blog in your own publication. If you mention us in your quote, we’ll appreciate it all the more. Ideas for this blog came from Seth Godin, one of the most remarkable entrepreneurs I know of, and Andy Sernovitz, and their respective books “The Big Moo” and “Word of Mouth Marketing.” I highly recommend both of them.

*Disclaimer: Your Hero will be nice to you, so please be nice to him or her: do not overfeed your Hero.

IX Web Hosting Blog