Improve communication quality!

[regentronique]

Quality communications is really not the strong suit for HostGator.

For years, it was difficult to receive the pretended eMail announcement of anything and this is not acceptable for a reseller.

Do not lose your time to go with a LiveChat representative to tell them that you never received any announcement eMail precedently, because you will most certainly be answered that THEY have sent eMails...

No more investigation would be done on that subject.

I took the time to verify from which source they were collecting our eMail address, i have been answered many times that it was from Billing. When i ask the technician to verify what is the effective eMail address he see in Billing, he is always confirming that it is the one that i really have.

So even if i have the same eMail address in Billing, in the WHM contact and in the Ticket section i rarely receive anything else than ticket responses.

I am monitoring that eMail address each 15 minutes and it is always functional except when outages occur like this last tuesday. So what are the excuse this time for not informing me in advance for our MySql server update day and time?

Oddly the blank eMails from Billing did not had any trouble to reach me those years!

Here you can see an excerpt of my LiveChat exchange of last week:
================================================== ====================
Chat Start Date: May 7 2009 4:08:34 PM
(4:16:23 PM) Rej: Are the admins using the contact eMail from the cPanel WHM to contact us?
(4:17:20 PM) Ryan Ro: We are using the contact email in our billing system.
(4:19:13 PM) Rej: My billing email address is supposed to be exactly the same one as my cpanel one. Can you verify which one you have for the account *******.
(4:19:30 PM) Ryan Ro: Whats your domain?
(4:21:18 PM) Rej: **********.com , from what i use to login my address is supposed to be "***@**********.com"
(4:21:53 PM) Ryan Ro: Yes, that is what we have on file.
(4:23:27 PM) Rej: So how do you explain that quite frequently i do not receive the announcement of server upgrade? I do not have any SPAM filter on that account and i also have the catchall enabled. Even then i received NOTHING!
(4:23:59 PM) Ryan Ro: You will get an email before we start the upgrade.
(4:24:37 PM) Rej: You told me that it was one week before, that upgrade is supposed to happen in the next days...
(4:25:35 PM) Ryan Ro: Rej: [04:10:48 PM] Ryan Rodriguez: You would be notified about a week before.That is what I said "about" a week before.
(4:26:29 PM) Rej: So it could be between 4 to 10 days?
(4:28:00 PM) Ryan Ro: You will get an email before we start the upgrade.
(4:28:40 PM) Ryan Ro: You can also keep up with upgrades by going to http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=49503
(4:29:54 PM) Rej: I hope yo can understand that many enterprises cannot inform their own customers without beeing informed themself at least 48 hours in advance. And in the forum when they post the information it is already too late because they announce that it is already started!
(4:30:50 PM) Ryan Ro: I understand your frustration.
(4:31:45 PM) Rej: So you should understand that i would like to know the date and hour of the next server batch to be upgraded at least 48 hours in advance...
(4:32:17 PM) Ryan Ro: You will be emailed before we start the upgrade.
================================================== ====================
Conclusion, i WAS NOT EMAILED for one more time!

This situation is ridiculous, because it is not a NORMAL way to conduct a business. As a reseller i would not act this way with my customers.

Regarding other method of communication:

When you receive a PM from a staff member of HostGator regarding a forum complaint, you are understanding that he want the conversation to be private and to try to find a solution to your problem. So you start a process of PM exchange until the solution is clear and functional. But what can you do if he cease to respond and you have no clue why? Even after trying to reach him for over a week? You go back to the forum and ask publicly. But if then his final answer is that it is too "costly" to take time to communicate with you, then you are face to a wall!

Here you can see an excerpt of the forum response:
================================================== ====================
"...so offering any time to you whether it be on the forums, tickets, chat, or phones we are losing money."
================================================== ====================
Seem that staff do not care enough about the fact that meantime i am losing money too...

I tried to communicate this problem of communication at Brent Oxley with a PM, asking him to have some details writen somewhere in the TOS or the knowledge section for the customers benifits, to prevent that this kind of problem repeats continuously with oher customers. After more than a week i received no answer to my PM, then i sent an eMail that had to be whitelisted and went throught the process. This have been more than 5 days without any answer to my eMail, more than 2 weeks since my first try to contact Brent, almost a month since the start of my problems with a dedicated server that still cost me over 100$CA / month.

When the outage occured this tuesday, i tried to call HostGator. I have been answered : "You are caller 29...". Then i waited more than 35 minutes on a line, that i was believing in a holding process, that would be finally answered. Seem that i was wrong, but there was no message that would let me know otherwise, there was a waiting music for less than a minute then a long silence and never the line was hangup!

So,

1- If HostGator do not contact previously, many of its customers, before doing modifications on their server.
2- If HostGator staff are discontinuying communications on the basis that it is not a financial profitable situation.
3- If the owner of HostGator do not respond to Private Message or even Private eMail for 2 weeks.
4- If the telephone line do not operate in emergency situation.

Then communication quality is really bad with HostGator.

To their advantage, i must say that they almost always responded in a very polite manner. But what is the use of a polite answer that do not help you at all to get an honest answer to your problem?

I really hope that someone will take care of this situation before it degrade even more.

[Pitrow]

HG sends out emails before upgrades? Hmmm.... I've never ever seen one. Nor any billing emails or emails of any other kind for that matter. I know they have my correct email also.

Guess they just disappear into the 'net somewhere.

[cleanxhost]

I think that the last time that I received an e-mail from HG was 5 months ago because the credit card that I have on file, for some strange reason was rejected. So I paid directly, it was accepted, and never had that issue again, strange...
Other than that e-mail that I received, I have never had anything from them regarding server upgrades, billing, etc...

[regentronique]

Thank you Pitrow and cleanxhost for supporting my suggestion!

[fanfavorite]

I agree that better communication is needed. I haven't received an email about server upgrades since the php5 upgrade. It also would be nice to have the forum display properly for blackberry's since this is how I have to find out about upgrades, etc

[Pazeh]

Totally agree,

I have made a similar suggestion a while ago, but....

Hope HG develops a system & start sending at least pre update / pre scheduled maintenance email very soon, specially for resellers!!

[regentronique]

Thank you fanfavorite and Pazeh for your support.

[GatorDHanna]

Hi there,

Thanks for your very on target feedback and suggestions. This is a long reply, so thank you in advance for reading!

You're right -- communicating with customers about upgrades, etc. has not been a strong point of ours historically. It is also not something we claim to be perfect at or something that we need much convincing to work towards improving.

With that in mind, though, we have certainly improved a lot over time and I think the changes we made (especially over the last few months) show that we are fully committed to improving and more effectively communicating with our customers.

At the moment, our shared customers are notified of upgrades, etc. via a notice in their cPanel and an option to opt-in for email notifications. I see you are a very active forum user and as I'm sure you know, we also post notices on our forums here, which you can subscribe to via email and/or RSS.

I checked out your account and it looks like you have a reseller account with us. We can't put anything in the cPanels of our resellers because we don't want our resellers' customers to know who we are and that we actually maintain their website. With that in mind, though, we're looking for a solution to keep our resellers up-to-date and ensure that they receive as many notifications as possible beyond what we provide in the forums.

A lot of the issues with notifying our customers stems from our sub-standard billing system. We are in the process of creating a brand new billing system that will make it much easier for us to notify customers frequently and accurately about upgrades, outages, etc. This should improve communication a lot as well.

As for your complaint about not hearing back via PM, that is not usual. Our employees are usually very good about responding to customers via PM, email, and of course, our ticket system and live chat. If you'd like to forward me any PMs you have not heard back on, feel free to do so and I'll do whatever I can to ensure you get the answers you need.

Whoever said that we lose money when we talk to our customers is telling you about a fact that I don't think any business tries to conceal. In a perfect world, our customers would never have to contact us and we would never have to contact them. Everyone would be able to go about their lives without any problems and we wouldn't have to hire more than 200 people to respond to emails, live chats, phone calls, etc. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

However, things happen with servers and websites and customers have occasionally questions, and as a result, we make ourselves available and we do so happily. A large competitive advantage of ours is the accessibility and quality of our customer service and we're proud of that, so please don't take that person's comment as a dismissal at the importance of your business or your time, but simply a reference to the disconnect between what the ideal situation is (a perfect hosting experience) and the reality (occasional questions and problems) .

On Tuesday, you were likely disconnected because our phone lines were overwhelmed. We noticed the same thing when we tried to call our datacenter / network provider as well. When there is a major outage like that, phone systems simply can't handle the load. We don't keep the staffing / technology available to handle 500 calls at once because we only run into situations like that once every few years and it'd be a waste of money to keep all of those people and all of that technology on hand (thus forcing us to charge more to our customers).

I will say now that we are fully and unequivally committed to fully supporting our customers and we do so on a daily basis. The business we are in is much more of a service business than it is a technology business and we fully realize that. With that in mind, if you ever encounter less than ideal support from us, I encourage you to contact me personally and I will do whatever I can to help you out.

If you have any questions or further comments/concerns, feel free to PM me or post here. And of course, while the "you" I refer to in this post is regentronique (the original poster), what I've said here applies to any and all of our other customers as well.

Thanks again for your suggestion and for reading.

[Pazeh]

First let me thank you for the update Hanna but still that won't solve the problem, even for the shared users!

If the server is down, how does HG expects the user (even if shared) to access their Cpanel & get notified about the problem.

Reseller users will be in the same position, if they want to rely of forum / forum RSS, just like what happened couple of days ago.

During the signup, HG asks for an email address that is NOT hosted on HG (which is great thing to do)! The first impression that I got was they were going to send notification to that email address if something happens, but..... I get nothing other than ticket updates & empty billing emails there.

What is needed for resellers is a separate email list, which is hosted in completely different location (or yet better, locations) where HG can send email notifications to the resellers if something bad happens.

I don't know how much this can be related to the billing system that you are developing & wonder why HG wants to put these two eggs in one basket.

[regentronique]

I am seriously asking myself if this suggestion will bring anything positive?

I sent a PM to Douglas, i sent another PM to Brent and still no responses...

Worst, yesterday at HostGator they decided to do another MySql upgrade on our reseller server "superbird" with absolutely no warning, 31 hours after having posted that the upgrade was completed!

After asking why nothing was posted on the forum, i was responded by GatorLBrower that it was mentioned in this thread :

http://forums.hostgator.com/emergenc...605#post170605

But in this thread ABSOLUTELY nothing is mentioned about "superbird"!

Dont be surprised, because on LiveChat they told me again that they sent me a eMail to inform me of this new upgrade, then i asked the representative how come they could inform me a week in advance when they did it the day after the previous one was completed. He could only apologize...

These behaviors are childish, unprofessionnal, irresponsible and offensive to resellers who care about their customers, mostly when those unadvertised upgrades cause databases tables failures and render inoperative many customers Drupal installations.

Who would be responsible enough to stop all that nonsense!

Communication is a very important matter for a responsible enterprise...

I really start to think that HostGator do not deserve the good reputation that most people believe they have...

[GatorDHanna]

I spoke with the administrator here at HostGator who is responsible for planning a lot of our upgrades and here is what he told me about notifications and how they work:

Shared customers have their cPanels updated and can also opt to receive those notifications by e-mail. Generally, they are updated 5 days or so in advance.

Reseller/SEO Hosting customers have email notifications sent out about 5 days before any scheduled upgrades, etc. to their billing e-mail address.

To ensure that we don't interfere with any of our dedicated server customers' configurations, etc. we only update their servers on request and do so at a time that is pre-determined and convenient for them.

The procedures above are what we try to follow for every upgrade and similar scheduled event.

We're always working on improving how effectively and how frequently we communicate and we're always open to constructive suggestions on how we can go about improving. If you have any, feel free to send them my way and I'll ensure they are taken under consideration by the right people.

[Pitrow]

Originally Posted by GatorDHanna

Reseller/SEO Hosting customers have email notifications sent out about 5 days before any scheduled upgrades, etc. to their billing e-mail address.

In my 5-ish years here, I've never received a single one of those.

on edit: just verified with live chat that they have my correct email, and it's one that I check every weekday from 9-5. Never seen an email addressing upgrades, etc.

[GatorDHanna]

This is probably because the notifications described above have been implemented relatively recently. I checked and it doesn't seem like the server your sites are on has undergone any major maintenance lately, which is why you haven't been notified.

Going forward, however, you should be notified via email.

[esl]

I have received server scheduled outage notices within the past month with an approximate date and time sent to my billing email address.

[regentronique]

Ok, i have an update!

Patrick Pelane, HostGator Deputy Chief Technical Officer, just confirmed that all resellers having a "special-reseller" package(the one at 15$/month) were never notified of any server upgrades because they were excluded from the notification software designed by him and Dave. I took me quite tenacity (days of ticketing) to get this very clear answer.

He confirmed that he have made changes in the operation of his notification process so all resellers will be now informed previously for any server upgrade...

This only proove that, even if communication is very difficult and that customers have to be very patient and tenacious to get to the proper admin levels beeing often answered that we are wrong, we can finally get the right answer.

I hope that all HostGator employees would be informed of this situation, to know that customers can be right when they complain something is not working properly at HostGator.

Thank you Patrick, for finding the problem and having it fixed!

[GatorDHanna]

Thanks for the update and for making us aware of that. I'm glad we were able to find out about that oversight and get it fixed up for you and our other customers with that plan.

[dhewlette]

I still don't think enough is being done. I've been happy with my host gator support and experience on a whole, with the one exception of advanced notification just like the issue that was raised here. I posted a couple months ago about it here. No response to that thread from any host gator employee. Not that I must get an employee's response (after all, this is an user forum), but I posted in suggestions...thought I'd at least get acknowledged.

Regardless, I still don't see why more hasn't been done yet. All these responses are just back and forth between customers (mostly resellers) saying they aren't getting alerts, and Host Gator saying no, everyone is actually getting these emails. Clearly we aren't or this wouldn't be an issue. Even if you think we're lying, misplacing our emails, or having spam filtering issues, why would you not take 20 minutes out of one day and set up a mailing list for us? I'm no expert, but I can get a dada mail (a mailing list software...if you're unfamiliar) install up and running in 20 minutes. Post the link all around the site and forum, then let us opt-in. Heck, you can even set it up so that one of the email addresses you are already sending server alerts out to automatically triggers the opt-in list...thus eliminating the need for ANY additional work at the time of sending out alerts.

And I just came up with that solution with about 3 and a half minutes of heavy brainstorming. Imagine the possibilities if we actually sat down and thought this through for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or, dare I say, and entire hour!

Don't take my sarcasm the wrong way. It's meant to be playful and fun. But its a serious issue that has been going on for months with nothing but banter between the two sides. Step up and at least pretend to implement a new solution! Promises of a new billing software on the horizon don't help us today.

After all, much of what determines how we respond to situations (like server outages) hinges on our feelings about Host Gator overall. If we think you're doing something to actively combat poor communication, we will be happy. But, if we think you are doing nothing (as is the case now), we will be angry. Thats just a little business hint from a reseller down here in the trenches (you're welcome). And these are the trenches. Especially with conversational bullets whizzing by (in both directions) and no targets in sight.

Shoot to kill. But if you can't kill, shoot to thrill.

[GatorDHanna]

Thanks for your post and suggestions. I apologize that someone didn't respond to / acknowledge your last thread.

I'm not sure if you saw my post above, but the current procedure is to send out notifications via email for planned outages. These are the type of events that we can give 5 days notice on without any trouble and we're doing everything we can to ensure those notifications go out consistently and correctly.

We don't send out notifications for unplanned outages at this time. Is this something that resellers like yourself really want?

As a blogger and HostGator customer myself, my feeling with notification of unplanned outages is that it doesn't really make a difference. I can't change the way my site will operate or anything I've done once the site is down, so it is just a matter of having to ride the outage out per say.

Thankfully, we get most of the outage issues resolved quite quickly and the inconveniences and problems caused for our customers are significantly minimized.

At the moment, customers who really want notifications of unplanned outages can subscribe to the Network Status forum and be notified via email and/or RSS. Is this an option that you guys have explored as well?

We're definietly open to ideas, suggestions, and comments, so feel free to continue to provide them.

[Pitrow]

Originally Posted by GatorDHanna

Thanks for your post and suggestions. I apologize that someone didn't respond to / acknowledge your last thread.

I'm not sure if you saw my post above, but the current procedure is to send out notifications via email for planned outages. These are the type of events that we can give 5 days notice on without any trouble and we're doing everything we can to ensure those notifications go out consistently and correctly.

We don't send out notifications for unplanned outages at this time. Is this something that resellers like yourself really want?

As a blogger and HostGator customer myself, my feeling with notification of unplanned outages is that it doesn't really make a difference. I can't change the way my site will operate or anything I've done once the site is down, so it is just a matter of having to ride the outage out per say.

Thankfully, we get most of the outage issues resolved quite quickly and the inconveniences and problems caused for our customers are significantly minimized.

At the moment, customers who really want notifications of unplanned outages can subscribe to the Network Status forum and be notified via email and/or RSS. Is this an option that you guys have explored as well?

We're definietly open to ideas, suggestions, and comments, so feel free to continue to provide them.

It would be nice if we were to get notifications of unplanned outages, so that we don't look stupid when our customers call and ask why their sites aren't working. At least we'd be able to answer with whatever information you've given us, rather than telling them "I don't know, but I'll look into it."

[matgalla]

Hostgator: Here is what I think ...

Frankly, whoever wrote your instruction pages should be skinned alive, boiled in a vat of oil, strung up on a gibbet ... and then punished!

Your 'helpful' instructions are anything but. Indeed, they are a jumble of jargon, gobbledygook, assumptions and ambiguity. It is amazing! Isn't that EXACTLY what instructions should NOT be?

Your writer is correct about one thing: the whole process is actually quite simple. So he cannot even clearly explain something that is really perfectly straightforward. How clever is that?

It is no wonder that you need a 24/7 helpline!

OK, no doubt the people working for you are very clever. But clever clogs often cannot understand why the average idiot, like me, can't understand. You know, you would save yourselves a lot of trouble if you bothered to get a really good teacher to rewrite your instructions. Not, by the way, someone who just thinks they can teach (I am afraid there are plenty of that sort about).

Here is a suggestion about how instructions should be written: Imagine you are tied to a chair on top of a bomb. The bomb goes off if anyone following your directions makes a mistake. Then you might write more clearly and intelligently!

You could make a game of this. However, in your case, I think it might help if you were to use a real bomb!

For more suggestions on how to write good, clear instructions please visit my blog: http://matgallaugher.com (The Internet Launchpad)

There you will see that as part of my Demand Plain English campaign, I am reproducing this memo, and my thoughts on Hostgator. But I will make you this promise ...

If you are good enough to rewrite your instructions clearly, then just let me know. I will check for myself and, if satisfied, I will happily add a postscript congratulating you, thanking you, and recommending your service to my visitors.

Look, I know you are by no means the only company guilty of producing such gobbledygook garbage. But don't you see that you could get a huge jump ahead of your competition if you sorted out this problem? It's simple: you would win more customers if you wrote more clearly.

Please act on my advice. I hope to hear from you soon.

Mat Gallaugher

PS: Don't take my threats to skin you alive and boil you in oil too literally. Give me time to calm down, and I may actually give you a choice!

[Keith W]

[striddy]

Originally Posted by matgalla

Frankly, whoever wrote your instruction pages should be skinned alive, boiled in a vat of oil, strung up on a gibbet ... and then punished!

Your 'helpful' instructions are anything but. Indeed, they are a jumble of jargon, gobbledygook, assumptions and ambiguity. It is amazing! Isn't that EXACTLY what instructions should NOT be?

HG sells hosting services. They are not here to "teach" you how to do anything hosting related.

When you purchase a car you don't get lessons on either how to drive it nor how to dismantle or service the engine.

[Keith W]

Originally Posted by striddy

HG sells hosting services. They are not here to "teach" you how to do anything hosting related.

When you purchase a car you don't get lessons on either how to drive it nor how to dismantle or service the engine.

Well said that man

[esl]

Originally Posted by striddy

HG sells hosting services. They are not here to "teach" you how to do anything hosting related.

When you purchase a car you don't get lessons on either how to drive it nor how to dismantle or service the engine.

Very appropriate comparison.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by striddy

HG sells hosting services. They are not here to "teach" you how to do anything hosting related.

When you purchase a car you don't get lessons on either how to drive it nor how to dismantle or service the engine.

Originally Posted by Keith W

Well said that man

Originally Posted by esl

Very appropriate comparison.

I agree. I once owned a pre-synchromesh Triumph, whose manual did both, and the evolution of its family to extinction says something about that kind of business model. (Though perhaps it says more about the general lack of enthusiasm for decarbonizing valves at home than the efficiency of getting such info from a more specialized source.)