10 webhosting ways to lose clients

I had to start looking around for a new webhosting service for The Forum SA the other day, and in the process learnt a few things about how to lose clients.

Here are my top 10 ways to lose clients if you are a webhosting service. And there might be a lesson or two in there for the rest of us mere mortals.

1. Offer a 24/7 support service, then make sure no-one on duty can solve the problem.
If you are going to do this, at least make sure that whoever responds shows some level of competence. When I report a problem, a response that the problem has been forwarded to someone who has enough skill to deal with it is OK. Taking 12 hours and a reminder to get a response from this expert is not. Especially when my website is in the middle of a melt down.

2. Offer a 99.9% uptime warranty, then don’t honour it when your client has 48 hours downtime.
If you are going to give a warranty, at least try to make sure it means something. My site went down a total of 23 hours in three incidents over 30 days. That would mean I am due about 3 years of trouble free webhosting. When it went down again the tech goes “it’s a goal.” Well, that’s not what the marketing says.

3. Make sure you have a hidden limit that will guarantee your client can’t use the big features you are famous for.
One of the latest games in webhosting is overselling. The package looks impressive, but buried in the fine print is a reference to abuse. This will relate to a technical limit that is the IT equivalent of passing a camel through the eye of a needle and keeping it alive in the process.

4. Tell the client to upgrade their package when you are using only 0.01% of the existing deal.
You have to wonder just how well designed this upgraded package is going to be given the obvious design flaw of the current package.

5. Make sure the upgrade costs 20 times more than the client is currently paying.
Make me wonder if your original package was a trap.

6. Tell the client that taking the upgrade is the only option.
Make sure I think your original offer was a trap so that I start doing some research. And find your competition's better offer for the upgrade features whilst I’m about it.

7. Increase the ridiculously low arbitrary limit that got your client upset and not tell the customer.
Realising you are about to lose a client and bending your "rules" to fix the problem is good. Not letting the client know you have made the effort is bad. And stupid.

8. Have your technicians draw up your marketing communication.
Technicians and coders like talking to machines. For good reason - they are not very good at talking to people.

9. Have a PayPal button for online payment, and then insist on a wire bank transfer.
Don’t offer an option if the client is not allowed to use it. Stick to rubbing salt in the existing wounds rather than finding new ways to cut the customer up.

10. Email the customer to call your support centre, and make sure the support centre can't use the telephone.
I could not believe it. In setting up a new hosting account elsewhere I was told to make a telephone call to sales. Not only did sales not know why I was calling (You asked me, remember!), the techie on the line started telling me to take my business elsewhere by email - whilst I was still talking to him on the phone!
See also 8 above.

Of course, at no point did they see any of this as an invitation to take my business elsewhere. Now to check if my business is not making the same mistakes somehow.

Stuff marketing - Think credibility

So you are not getting the results you want from your marketing campaign.

• You have profiled your perfect customer.
• You have got your message out to your target market.
• You have highlighted the benefits and given the features.
• Everyone you show your advert to thinks it is fantastic.

And yet no-one is buying. At least not in viable numbers.

I've got a suggestion:

Stop thinking "marketing" and start thinking "credibility."

Despite your wonderful offering, you simply are not credible enough for people to buy from you.

This really struck home for me at a fairly tender age. I remember running around as a youngster looking for personal sponsors for my surfing. The target market was surf shops and surf related gear manufacturers.

So there I was running around with photos and goodness only knows what else, waving my hands as to what an exciting prospect I was and what a worthwhile investment I'd be until one wise bill said to me:

You've told me how good you are. When everybody else starts telling me how good you are I'll sponsor you.

Credibility. I had none.

I've seen lots of business owners over the years never quite get their marketing right.

I've been to marketing seminars, read books, listened to tapes, watched vidoes, read blogs and been to goodness only knows how many marketing websites - all punting all sorts of marketing mixes, messages, strategies and other variants on the theme of marketing.

Here are some of them:

• You need repeated exposure before an advert works.
• You need to call 7 times to get the sale.
• Incorporating sex helps if you're selling to men.
• Incorporating family helps in selling to women.
• Be likeable. Smile and shake hands.
• Be fascinated with them. Stop trying to be fascinating yourself.
• Identify the need. Then introduce your solution.
• And of course, if the need isn't in mind - create the need!!

Yeah. They all work. I've got no gripe there. And I believe you can spend days, weeks, even years practicing and experimenting for the penny to drop and get the concepts gelled in your head that will one day lead to your killer marketing strategy. But maybe here's a shortcut.

Stuff marketing - Think credibility.

What you need is to be credible. This is a contest for credibility.

It's all very well getting your message to places where it will be found by people who need your solution. But when they get there:

Your message needs to be credible. You need to be credible.

And if you aren't credible, you're going to need someone who is credible to deliver that message for you.

So maybe before you go spending good money chasing exposure, start thinking about what you can do to make sure your message is the most credible option for your consumer when it reaches him or her.

What can you do to improve your credibility?
It would be great to hear what you think about this.