If you’ve been with us for any length of time you’ll start to recognize that we do things a little differently around here. It’s not just that Reclaim Hosting “feels” like a different kind of company, in fact it becomes pretty obvious when comparing with our services and features with others. And that’s not to imply that we come out on top with every feature! (I’d be surprised if we did, we’re a year and a half old with zero investors growing this community in a much different way). I’ve avoided the “comparison chart” complex for awhile although I think it could be useful to see how we shape up to others and I’ll put something like that together soon. But an interaction I had today with a customer prompted me to start writing about some of the more common features of other web hosting providers that you think you want, and yet you don’t because they’re a myth. Let’s talk about “24/7 support”.
I helped a customer today with their site that had been dealing with error messages for a month. It shocked me someone would put up with issues for a month without sending me an email or anything so I questioned why he waited so long and begged him not to do so in the future (we resolved the issue in 20 minutes!). His response was this:
The reason I didn’t contact you so far, to be honest, is because I guess I am not used to this kind of quick and awesome response! I have my personal site with [company name that totally doesn’t rhyme with SnowCaddy removed]….when I call the company directly, their employees only sound like they are trained to replace problem-solving with fake courtesy (“I apologize” is the most common line) from a rule book 🙂 Other companies were even worse in my previous experiences.
You see, 24/7 support is a bit like a 24/7 drive through McDonalds. Yes, you can eat at 3 in the morning, if you’re willing to order from a menu of about 5 different foods that have all likely been sitting way too long under a heater. I’ve even had companies that promised 24/7 support and then after hours I very clearly got nothing more than an automated “Thanks for contacting us, we’ll reply shortly” response that went hours without response. Funny how those 24 hours quickly start to look like normal business hours with a combination of automation or outsourced undertrained support personnel the rest of the time. You deserve better, we all do. Here’s a screenshot of a report from a support product you may have noticed us using in the past month that helps us respond in a more casual form than a ticketing system:
The myth of 24/7 support is that it’s rarely 24/7 and quite often an extremely sub-par form of “support”. Yet with Reclaim Hosting what you get is so much better. Instead of promises of getting “some kind of response” any hour of the day, those numbers speak for themselves. Particularly because in almost all cases you’re not just getting a random support technician who know’s nothing about your account, you’re talking to me, the same guy that keeps the servers humming and helps you think through that choice of plugins for the course you’re teaching. With Reclaim Hosting you get fast, personalized, support from a real person who isn’t going to throw a canned set of responses back at you.
Ready to stop struggling on your own and get real help building a presence on the web? Join us and let’s continue to build something that defies the norms of this broken industry together.
