(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Superb Internet’s Elya McCleave and A Small Orange’s Douglas Hanna presented some very compelling strategies for delivering a better customer experience to hosting customers in their shared Monday morning presentation at HostingCon 2010.
Elya McCleave, Superb Internet’s vice president of customer care, kicked off “Strategies for Building a Customer-Focused Company,” the first session in the sales and marketing track of HostingCon. In determining a strategy to deliver excellent hosting experiences, McCleave actually looked to brands outside of hosting – to the hotel and service businesses – to determine how to develop an effective strategy.
Central to this is the creation of a culture of empathy.
Superb Internet was about to go about this by assigning an executive role focused on customer experience, and creating a proactive customer care team. This, sort of “Chief Customer Officer”, can guide and manage the customer experience. It may come at no surprise that the customer’s end experience stems from the company itself. “Take care of your staff,” McCleave said, “treat your staff as champions.”
Within the organization, a host should look at all levels of the company, and it has to start with the CEO. How much time do you spend coaching the managers, and how do those managers coach the employees. “I’ve spent a lot of time coaching and training, which is something a lot of companies bypass.”
This makes employees more happier, and that not only reduces turn-over, but it also creates better customer experiences.
Central to creating an excellent customer experience is “creating a culture of empathy.” Employees should “slip into the shoes of the customer,” enabling them to understand their situation and their frustrations. This is done at hotels like the Four Seasons by giving employees and their families free stays at their hotels. Similarly, this is done at Superb Internet by giving support staff free shared hosting accounts. In this way, staff can understand the experience, and even make some recommendations.
Following suit, A Hanna talked about building a great customer experience, however, from the perspective of building effective teams. Hanna, whose background includes posts at large Web host HostGator, has a unique perspective in that he is now at a very small host with about 15 employees, all working remotely.
The advantages of a bigger company are that there are enough people for 24/7 customer service coverage, have a large knowledge base; can afford customized, high-end systems, and can afford big name, experienced managers from big companies. They do, however, tend to have greater turnover, and lots of policy and procedures limit its flexibility. Also there are lots of customers, making the workplace busy and hectic.
Smaller companies, on the other hand, can build a rapport with customers – think the TV bar “Cheers” versus a chain bar. Within the organization, management can also interact and work with employees more closely.
Large companies, however, can leverage the advantages of the small company by creating an effective team structure.
A team is typically a self-sufficient group that makes it seem like a 10-15 person company. Also, account managers can put a voice and a face to large organizations “Account managers let you build a personal repore with the company,” Hanna said. Bad account managers, however, can have the opposite effect, so it’s important to hold them to high standards.
Staff considerations are also crucial. “If you get a jerk in your 10 person company… it’s going to do a lot more damage, than at your 10,000 person company.”
So, creating a customer-focussed organization starts at the CEO and permeates every tier of the company. And, while she notes that there is more to it, McCleave rightly notes, ”if employees are happy, customers will be happy.”
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