What a difference
by Andrew Smith on 17/02/06 at 2:29 pm
1 comment
On a similar note to my previous post about poor customer feedback from iBurst, I present a company that exists on the opposite end of the spectrum – Hetzner. This hosting company receives awards every year for their great customer service, and today’s episode speaks for itself. The key ingredient to their success is keeping the customer informed. Here is an e-mail I received from them a few minutes ago:
Dear Andrew
As at 13h15 (Friday, 17th February 2006) Hetzner is experiencing problems with its Telkom lines due to a severe car accident outside our offices that has damaged the Telkom node.
Clients will receive an engaged signal when calling into our offices. Telkom personnel are currently attending to the problem. However, it looks as if the situation will remain unchanged for the rest of the day. We are in constant contact with Telkom and anticipate repair of the node to continue throughout the weekend and is expected to be completed in time for normal business hours on Monday morning.
Email support continues as per usual with email queries being attended to with priority during this period. We are also able to make limited outgoing calls. Please email us your contact number if you would like us to phone you, alternatively email us at support@hetzner.co.za.
Our data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town are not affected by this incident.
We regret the inconvenience caused and thank you for your continued patience.
Your Hetzner Team.
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
Steve
Feb 20th, 2006
The difference is actually so simple: CRM (customer relationship management) basically software (lots of opensource options) that keeps a record of all your customers, and can be set up to inform them of problems, wish them happy birthday, etc via sms or e-mail en masse.
This works not only because they keep you informed, but they personalise your service and make you feel like they care about you. They probably don’t, but at least they care about your money enough to keep you in the loop.
The really ironic thing, is that the hetzner e-mail was, no doubt, automatically produced and distributed, and it seems clear that the iburst e-mail was written as an individual reply to your specific query by and individual person (who seems to have been written it at 2am after a bottle and a half of red wine)
There is a lot to learn from your experience andrew, and the old addage “If you are not going to do something properly, don’t do it at all” really applies here. And for us small, and aspiring, entrepreneurs read this presentation Dna11 by a company that was started with $5000 and will (did?) turn over $1000000 in their first year (and they have a more than average profit margin in there)