I was soooo glad to read Scott Bellows’ comment on my Web Hosting in 2007 post from yesterday. He made the same point that I’ve been trying to present to quite a few web hosting execs:
Today, exceptional service is necessary as customers are still expected to install, configure and maintain any software application they choose to run. But what of tomorrow’s hosting industry?
Consider the Slideshare application you used to host your “2007 Web Hosting Industry Outlook” presentation. I assume you didn’t have to worry about hardware at all when making your hosting choice. The same can probably be said of software as well (you don’t have to configure apache to use Slideshare). How much of a factor was exceptional service in your choice of hosting?
Exactly. Totally. Because Slideshare (or YouTube or MySpace or Flickr) is what mass market hosting for consumers and non-technical businesses should look like. It’s what it WILL become. As SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby puts it, someone will make the web hosting process “stupid proof” – and win big.
Which is why I don’t buy it when folks in web hosting say that they’re not worried about Amazon or Microsoft or Google – because they have “better customer service”. It’s also why I disagree with this Texan’s view that in order to build a better hosting company, you’ve got to make sure your employees understand the importance of customer service.
In my mind, there are two types of “customer service”. It’s great if you pick up the phone before the second ring, answer how-to questions with super human patience and respond to billing disputes with courtesy and generosity. But sooner rather than later, the need for this kind of generic support will be eliminated through innovation and automation.
On the other hand, there will be increasing demand for Rackspace’s kind of support, for helping the Slideshares and YouTubes of the world (aka the successors to today’s shared hosting resellers) plan and manage and scale their infrastructure. In fact, support might be the wrong word for their kind of requirement. Expert advice would be a better way to describe it. In depth knowledge from someone who understands your technology infrastructure – AND your business – at least as well as you do.
So my response to Scott is yes, exceptional service will still be a valuable key differentiator for tomorrow’s web hosting companies. And as for my friends who are counting on their “better customer service” to win the battle against the Big Computers? Your not-so-secret weapon won’t work unless your support organization can deliver Rackspace’s kind of customer service.
