Don't Blow Smoke Up My Modem
March 17, 2008
by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief Social Media Strategist at xynoMedia Technology
In today's world of tech-savvy consumers, it's getting harder and harder for companies to blow smoke up our modems.
In my company, we don't use Outlook - or traditional email client software - we all use webmail, provided by our hosting company, Westhost (no relation).
Minute 1: Today I'm checking my email on webmail and all of a sudden it's taking 8 years to open one email.
Minute 3: I wait and wait, nothing loads. Not good.
Minute 4: I logged out and tried to log back in, only the log in page wouldn't load now. Getting irritated.
Minute 4:30: Thinking there was something wrong with our Internet connection, I tried to get to other non-cached sites to see if it was our hosting company or the Internet connection in general. CNN.com - check. HBO.com, BoingBoing.net - check. (I get distracted by a few of the latest posts and 2 minutes later...)
Minute 6: Going back to the web mail page. Nothing loads. Totally annoyed at this point.
Minute 7: Out of curiosity, I try to access our hosting company's website. In the past, if we can't access their site, it's a good indicator that something is really broken. Zip. Nada. I wait and wait, but nothing loads except the title of the page. Curiously annoyed now.
Minute 9: I call Westhost to see what's the deal-y.
Minute 10-11: Many more futile attempts at trying to load the web mail or the hosting company website. Went back to BoingBoing to waste more time.
Minute 12: By now, I've waited in queue for about three minutes.
Minute 13: A rep comes on the line to make sure I still want to hold and lets me know I'm third in line. I ask her if there are any network outages and she says, "Yeah, something's going on because I've gotten a lot of calls from people about problems accessing their site." I say, "Ok, thanks. I'll hold."
Minute 14-17: More BoingBoing. I check the site one more time to find it working.
Minute 18: Tech rep answers. I ask if there had been any network problems. His answer: "No, everything has been fine all day."
Minute 19-21: I asked him to check with the network technicians. A few minutes later he came back to the line and said that the networking team had not noticed an outage. He then chalked it up to a problem between my computer and their network -- even though I told him that I could access other sites just fine.
So, for the past 15 minutes this tech wants me to believe that I've been imagining these problems with the sites that are hosted on their servers? I can reach any other site, just not a Westhost-hosted site, and there's no problem? Are you serious right now?
The sad truth is many hosting companies never want to reveal any outages because then they can't boast a 99.9% up-time. Believe it or not, 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there can add up over the course of a year. A hosting company is only as good as their uptime, so many (not all) protect that stat with their lives -- even when it means bending the truth a bit to customers whom they think probably don't know any better.
A much better solution would be to be completely honest with the customer - because we know when something's up anyway - and offer a simple explanation as to what went wrong and what the company is doing to prevent the problem in the future. Or, just a quick note after the fact that says: "We experienced a small outage today. Everything is fine and we're working on a solution." But, many hosting companies bank on the customer not noticing a thing.
Thankfully, software is available (only $7.00) to help you determine your own website uptime stats and be alerted when your site is down - whether you notice it yourself or not.
Bottomline: the more the general public uses technology, they not only get smarter about operating that particular piece of technology, but they also get smarter about how technology in general works. Blow that smoke the other way, please.
Lee:
I totally hear what you're saying - that's actually the major reason that I could *never* go into the hosting business. The support is just nuts.
But, I'm not the typical user and I only make calls to my hosting company when I notice something really wrong - as in this case.
The flip side of that is a certain type of business might be more difficult - or thankless - than another type, but either show up and do a good job (which includes not lying to customers) or close the business and open a goat petting farm or something.
For me, it really is that cut and dry.
Thanks for reading and commenting,
Lena
Posted by: Lena West | March 17, 2008 at 02:48 PM
I'll agree that the company should have handled your call better. At my company (www.os-cubed.com) we not only tell people that we're having a problem, but we post the status on our (separate) website, with a fix ETA and keep it constantly updated with status messaging.
Hosting email is no small challenge - especially web mail. It's a commodity product which is offered at commodity prices, and people have high expectations for uptime and reliability.
Between spam filtering, sometimes flakey software (which of course we don't write - we just buy it) and user problems I've many times considered just tossing in the towel on hosting mail. It's not cost effective - but it is a service my clients demand of me.
I had a client once who decided to start playing with the lists and rules in his web account. He managed to create an infinite loop where a mail got forwarded to a list, which got forwarded back to the account, which caused 12 more to get forwarded to the list.... etc. 40gb of copies of the same message later I got the thing cleaned up - but not until my other mail clients had to suffer through some significant slow downs. Could I have prevented this? No probably not - it was a combination of a problem with the software (rules being paid attention to that created a loop) and the client (who didn't know better).
The network tech who answered your call didn't do the right thing - but cut us poor ISP providers a little slack - it's a tough job and people never call you to tell you "Wow, my emails been working flawlessly for months!" :)
Cheers,
Lee
Posted by: Lee Drake | March 17, 2008 at 08:27 AM