Questions Have Answers

A few of our clients have asked us to help them develop their websites and arrange hosting for them once developed.  We always give our clients a choice when making referral recommendations and consequently learn quite a lot about the various hosting companies’ business practices.  Although the company I’ll be discussing in this blog is one such company, it could just as well be any industry segment – it’s their business practices that I’d like to share with you as a cautionary tale:

This particular hosting company’s (We’ll call them “XYZ”) marketing materials boast the following:  “XYZ knows your site is critical to your business and offers a 99.99% uptime track record and high performing servers using the latest technologies and network design.  You can depend on XYZ’s high standards of operation to provide the reliable and steadfast website hosting that matters to you.”  Sounds good, right?  It sounded like exactly what our clients need.  The trouble is that they came nowhere near delivering on their marketing promise.

The first time the hosting server went down, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.  The second time, I was annoyed, but they assured me it was an anomaly – OK, I get that.  The third time the server went down, I called and calmly explained that the next time our sites went down - for any reason - we would be moving our business elsewhere.  That final episode of downtime happened a few weeks ago – and we pulled all of our business.  XYZ seemed to have a no-hassle policy with unsatisfied customers who wish to move their websites because when I called to cancel the account, the customer service representative was cheerful, happy to help, and processed my request quickly.  That was it.

In this instance, the hosting company didn’t have a prayer of keeping my business and maybe they knew it.  They didn’t put up any kind of a fight and didn’t even ask me any questions.  What really astounded me was the complete lack of process surrounding the loss of a client.  Now, I’m not suggesting that they implement a retention department where clients have to run the gauntlet just to close an account (I can only take so much of “Are you ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY SURE you want to do this?”), but how about making the best of a bad situation by asking a few questions and documenting the answers?  Sure, every business has perpetually dissatisfied customers who aren’t worth keeping; you’ll spend too much valuable time dealing with people who simply cannot be pleased, but you should still survey them.  It’s the only way to spot trends and it’s the trends that need to be fixed.

Consider your own business:  What are you doing to capture the thoughts and feelings of those who are no longer doing business with you?  All feedback is a gift and we should consider it carefully.  Many businesses work so hard to get customers coming in the front door that they rarely consider why they’re slipping out the back.  What measures might you put in place in your business to improve your future customer retention by asking questions?  Questions have answers, but you have to have the right questions and you have to find a way to get them answered.