Why Consistent Communication in the Midst of Customer Crisis Matters

It’s been right at 5 days since the server most of my sites sit on started acting up. Despite my hosting company’s best-reported efforts, the live versions of said sites are currently only updated to around September 21. For the average web folk, that might be suitable, but for me that means I’m currently missing something in the neighborhood of 150 blog posts and lots of site updates and such.I’ve been reluctant to post regularly because I was unsure what would happen to posts I posted in the meantime. (That was a lot of post-ing in one sentence.) Now I’m just frustrated.I understand that things break. I understand that things go badly sometimes, especially in regards to computer-related matters. What I don’t understand is a hosting company having a blog (ostensibly to stay in contact with its customers) that isn’t giving me regular posts about the status of my content on their servers, especially after FIVE DAYS. And by “regular posts” I mean every hour on the hour. I mean I want to know what the heck is going on. Overwhelm me with information. Flood my computer with so many updates about what you’re doing that I politely ask you to just stop until it’s all resolved. But whatever you do, silence shouldn’t EVER be an option for your clients.eleven2 has been a good hosting company to me for almost two years. They’ve provided a decent cost-to-service ratio, I’ve rarely had problems with them, and they’ve typically been available via IM for any support issues. (In fact, IM was one of the things that hooked me in the first place.)But I think one of the unfortunate truths of business has more to do with how the customer perceives you when things go BADLY as opposed to the previous months (years?) of good service. Sadly, just about every ounce of goodwill a customer has can evaporate with a quickness if the company fumbles one issue, or doesn’t communicate in the midst of it, or (even more frightening) if they handle something in a way we just plain don’t like. Customers are fickle. Our consumer culture makes it easy to be fickle; I’m only a mouse-click away from hundreds of businesses that do EXACTLY WHAT YOU DO (whatever that is) and so you need to be unique (and communicate!) or poof… they’re gone.