Great Customer Service Is Our Priority
We're quick. We're friendly and helpful. And we get the job
done right.
One of the things that really amazes us about many web
hosting companies who offer their services on the Internet is
how poor their customer service is. We set a higher standard.
Why Is Customer Service So Difficult For Some Companies?
Many companies have problems with customer service because
so many unnecessary mistakes get made. Mistakes cost time and
money. So when customer service is poor, it usually means that
mistakes are being made in unnecessarily high numbers.
Why should it take days to get simple problems resolved?
Perhaps an example will help explain it.
A Horror Story With Another Provider
Immediately after we started operations in May 2007, our
second new customer asked us to move an existing website from
their old provider over to us. We agreed. We won't name
names, because we're not trying to bad-mouth particular
competitors here. We just want to tell you a story and see if
it sounds familiar to you.
FTP Access Gone Wrong
We were given their contact person at the old provider and
contacted him to gain access to the files, email account
lists, databases, etc. that were associated with the account.
Once our new customer got him to respond to us, he provided
FTP information to their server. In case you don't know, FTP
is an acronym which means File Transfer Protocol. It's older
than the Internet itself, and it's very simple technology. In
fact it's the simplest and easiest way to move files between
servers and other computers.
Anyway, their contact person gave us the login and password
information. We tried it, but it didn't work. So we asked him
to double-check it. He said they were having server problems
and hoped to have it fixed soon. A day went by. Then, two days
later, they figured out that the password was wrong. We were
astonished. It took them two days to figure that out?!
So they gave us the right password. We tried again. This
time, we got in successfully, but there were no web files! So
we contacted them again.
Another day passed, and they finally gave us a new ID and
password that gave us access to the files. Bingo! So we
downloaded all the files and loaded them onto our
server.
They Forgot The Database
Bear in mind that we had asked for access to everything the
customer's website used. One possibility was a back-end
database. Databases are often used with websites to make
dynamically changing data available on the website under
varying circumstances. Did this customer's website have one?
It turned out that it did. We asked him what kind of
database it was, what the login information was, and what the
address of the server was. He said that there was a database
and gave us another ID and password. We inquired again: you
didn't answer our question. Which database technology are you
using and what is the server address? He finally gave us the
rest of the information. We tried logging in. The ID and
password didn't work. So once again, we had to ask him to fix
it and give us proper access.
We had to wait until the next week to get this information
from them.
Email Addresses? They Forgot Those Too
We inquired if there were any email addresses set up on the
account, because we would have to set them up on our email
server in order to provide continuity of email service. They
said that the customer did have them, but they gave us no
further information.
Clearly, the pattern of mistakes was continuing. So we
contacted the customer and asked them about their email
addresses, since customers usually know what email addresses
they use. Their answer was astonishing. They emailed us back:
Thanks again for what you're going through. As I mentioned, it has been several years of dealing with this. This is why you're our new Web God!...
As far as I know, we were never offered [email] addresses affiliated with our webpage. Shocker. Is it possible to have them? If so, how many?
In other words, the other provider's customer service was
so bad that the customer had never been given the option of
adding email addresses to their domain! A domain, by the way,
is something like "vahost.net." Thus, an email
address within a domain would be something like
user@vahost.net. The customer never knew that they could have
email addresses associated with their own domain because their
provider made so many mistakes that it never was clarified
that they could have email addresses!
We Make A Lot Fewer Mistakes Than Most Providers
We can't promise that we'll never make mistakes. After all,
we're only human. We make a lot fewer mistakes than most
providers, and we try very hard to fix them right the first
time when they do happen. That means you won't have to ask us
for help as often. And that means we aren't tied up doing
customer service all the time like so many of these other
companies do (if they do it at all). Which means that our customer service is easy
to reach and gets your hosting problems solved quickly.
We also can't promise that fixing things will never take
time. Sometimes that happens. Most of the time, fixes can be
made very quickly. But we can't promise that it won't ever
take awhile. No one can ever promise that. What we will
promise to do is to get the job done right, the first time.
That's how you provide superior service...by getting the job
done right with as few mistakes as possible. Saving on
mistakes means saving on time and money, a savings that you
gain too.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that you'll get superior customer
service at Virginia Host, LLC. Better yet, now you know how
and why
you'll get it.
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