RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

supposed to be a take off of Prince’s “lovely” song

Last week Paul from Blacknight posted about customers being annoyed and blaming the hoster straight away, expecting the sun, moon and stars, and looking for support via unofficial communicationas channels.

This is a fairly common occurance in the IT world. If you don’t tell them exactly what you’ll give them, they’ll expect more.

Buddy A does a favour (installs operating system, upgrades software, writes a website, hosting his site, and giving him the MD’s phone number/IM details ONCE etc) for a buddy B. Buddy A allows buddy B to contact him/her 24/7 by e-mail, IM, telephone etc.

Buddy A then starts to charge buddy B for the service.

Buddy B is fine with that, and all parties are happy continues. Buddy B still expects to get the level of communications/support from buddy A.

Then something goes wrong. Buddy A doesn’t like it when Buddy B blames/asks for too much help/expects an answer via IM/mobile phone/circumventing official support channels.

The milk goes sour, and gets thrown out.

The cause of this: buddy A allowed a friends relationship to become a professional relationship without clearly outlining the now _business_relationship_ communications channels. Or allowing a business relationship become to much like a friendship relationship.

This happens alot.

Shane wrote something about this a whlie ago, regarding a carpenter/IT person example.

I have to say I agree with this to a certain extent.

Why can a carpenter charge for his craft, but when someone suggests they get paid for installing an operating system people say “ah sur, it’ll only take a few minutes”. A minute installing is a lifetime in support.

While I can understand Paul’s point, _never_ever_say_your_customers_annoy_you.

Paul, I can empathise with your position. You try to be helpful and then you get burned by it. Technical support is one of the most difficult things to have to deal with in the IT world. Often you have to give plain language reasons to technical problems, and try to get the person to understand why the problem occured. And to do it well, you have to know what you are talking about. Thats why I have tried my best not to be involved _directly_ with it!

Why not, from the beginning say, “these are the official support channels, and I am not able to guarantee support by any other means”?

Or, an alternative, say “sure we can support you by whatever means you want, but we will charge you XXX for it”? When people have to pay money for something, they have to make a decision about whether they want it or not.

My experience with Blacknight, while I was a customer, _of_a_customer was fine. I was not dealing with them directly for support (too often) so I cannot say too much about it.

Technically things worked, and worked well. But, while all was well technically, I did get the impression, if people asked qustions, they were frowned on. If that is wrong, sorry, but that was my impression.

A small example. I have experience of another hoster (Tom Raftery hosts a number of websites I help out with or own).

I have to contact someone to do something for me, I have to go through the same contact.

I ask a question, and it gets answered.

One particular episode my contact was away for an extended period, and I had a very big problem.

I had to go to another contact within the hosting company. I asked for help, and while it was not this person’s job, they did help.

I was grateful and I got them an Amazon voucher. Did I have to? No. Did they expect it? I doubt it.

I did it, because while they told me this was not in their remit (I was not paying for it), they did it nonetheless.

The phrase of “the customer is always right” is one of those phrases that people use when something bad happens.

Not knowing the details of this particular issue (and not wanting to) I think issue was both parties.

You have to lay down the ground rules at the start. If the customer doesn’t ask, you have to tell them. Eg “we don’t keep backups for more than 24 hours. If something breaks and you don’t have a backup-tough. Of course if you want, we will charge you for a week of backups.” Whatever.

I don’t agree with Paul when he says “simple MySQL optimize query”. Paul - as much as you might aisagree, I would class myself as knowing a little bit about technical things, but I know jackshit about databases, queries, and all the rest of that stuff. You are a hoster, and you do. And if I need help with something to do with databases, who will I turn to - my hoster. Do I expect it for free? Well if its in my support contract, I do. If its not, then I expect to pay, beg for it.

Michele, MD of BK, said in the Sunday Business Post “IT” Magazine 2 weeks ago that most of their customers were not technical, and only cared about their e-mail, not their websites.

And I would say he is probably 100% right. So, you should be going after that other business of charging for support of other tools.

If the hoster installs my blog/database then I expect help with it. If its my own, then I would *like* some help, but I have no problem in paying, giving some thanks for help with it.

Paul, you can’t expect these people to know about database backups, and other shite involved with websites.

If they don’t know about it, either a) as Jonathan says tell them they are on their own, or b) charge them for it.

This smells so much like the Balcony TV arse-up when their videos were pulled from YouTube. The provider in that case, YouTube, had given them ample time to do something, but they were either a) too stupid, or b) didn’t listen.

In this case, Paul is complaining about something post problem. Why not layout the rules in the beginning?

I do understand that in hosting nowadays people want more for less money. But less money is not always better.

Look at RegisterFly. Pay the price of a pint to a company in America to handle your domainname registration.

This is one case where I would advise going with an Irish company.
And Paul, I have recommended Blacknight to a number of people for DNS hosting and also domainname registration on a number of occasions.

Anyway, Paul, I think you have done your customers a very big disservice. If I was still one of your customers, I would be very insulted. I think you have also done Blacknight a disservice.

You are there to provide a service, and charge for it. You don’t insult the people who pay you. Of course, maybe they are “*£&^%&”*, but you don’t say it in public!

If I was you, I would issue an apology to your customers. Well, if I was you I wouldn’t have written that post in the first place.

Anyway, thats my view. Sorry if you don’t agree with it. And this was not ment to insult, defame, of libel anyone.

Views welcome.

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