I lurked as a guest during part of ThePlanet-EV1Servers CEO Doug Erwin's IRC live chat this morning (see transcript here). The session was sparsely attended (25-30 users, of which 7 or 8 were employees), and since the chatroom was moderated ("for ease of use"), there wasn't much of a discussion flow. Worse yet, Doug sounded very, very defensive.
Q: With your new unbundled prices, I'm facing an increased cost and a $25 setup fee for the same config I now have. Can you explain this?
A: What we haven't charged you for is the incredible investment we're making in our current and new data centers...
Q: Since the buyout we noticed the quality of support has gone down...
A: On the contrary through talking to many customers in the last few months they see a huge improvement
While Doug's worked magic throughout his career (increasing BMC's market cap by 6x as COO; starting PentaSafe and selling it to NetIQ; reinventing RLX Technologies, leading to an HP acquisition), he doesn't speak PR, and it shows:
Q: It seems you have less support people than EV1 used to?
A: I happen to know who you are, and your relationship to an employee who is no longer with us...
What Doug (as well as many other web hosting companies) could use is a corporate evangelist, similar to Jeff Barr at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
+ Jeff maintains a blog where he highlights new products/services/partnerships as well as interesting use cases. Nothing builds confidence (not to mention buzz) like continuously updated examples of prominent websites that run on Amazon's S3 and EC2.
+ Jeff and his team attend conferences and user group meetings throughout North America and Europe. Check out his October/November schedule. During Doug's August live chat, a customer asked when EV1 planned to host its next get-together. "Never," Doug said, "Ok... when we become a BILLION dollar company... so start buying more." But what could be better for sales (not to mention product development) than meeting face to face with customers?
+ Jeff's group keeps tabs on what reporters and bloggers are saying about Amazon Web Services - and he makes this information public through del.icio.us; what a great idea! Testimonials are so much more compelling when they appear unedited, in users' original voices and on their own websites.
I'll bet you can set up your own evangelist program with a smaller budget than many hosting companies' Google Adwords spending. Doug, in particular, could benefit from a more personalized, more accessible marketing approach. Because I agree with half of the message on his new ads. No two customers are exactly alike - NOT EVEN if they're identical twins. That's why each should have a choice as to when and how to interact with their technology vendors. Don't you think?
PS - Doug is speaking at ISPCON at 12:45PM on November 9. It'll be a great chance to ask him some tough questions :)
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Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, October 26, 2006
Can someone tell Doug that The Planet's new web site makes us feel like we are back in year 2000 ? The previous web site (that was really similar to this one but with a feel of 2007) was better and Ev1's web site is really better.
Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, October 26, 2006
Being involved for several years with customer relations I learned that solid loyal customer relationships can only be formed with love and care. I was never the "fangs out" type of sales guy but come to think of it I never had to be. If the clients I took care of needed something they knew exactly where they could go to get it. Even if I did not have all the answers I would figure it out.
It will be interesting to see how effective business growth will be industry wide based on this new direction. I agree a "cheerleader" in every organization can only be good, especially when you have so many eyes on you.
Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, October 26, 2006
Martin - I don't like ThePlanet's new site either. I'm guessing the new layout came with their recent shopping cart implementation. The EV1 site is definitely much prettier, but even as an ex-employee I find it slightly confusing. The tiny "dedicated servers" link is way up at the top.
Mario - Cheerleader?? That reminds me of Robert getting visiting customers photo ops with the Houston Rockets Power Dancers... And all I had in mind were geeks who could talk about PHP :)
Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, October 26, 2006
I do remember those moments. Think I still have the pictures around somewhere, even this one with someone wearing a yellow hat ;)