Web Biz Strategy

One of the hats that I wear is webmaster, I build and maintain web sites for clients. This involves site hosting, and I’ve hosted sites with a number of different hosting providers. Recently I’ve been consolidating, moving my various sites to MediaTemple and closing out my hosting accounts with other providers.

Two days ago, I had a customer experience with GoDaddy so poor it was noteworthy. All I wanted to do was cancel a hosting account.

1. I logged in to their online tools, clicked the Cancel Account button, and - wait for it, I did - nothing happened. The wheel just kept spinning. I stopped, tried again, same thing.
2. I called their customer service and was on hold for 15+ minutes even though it was after 11pm PST.
3. When I got a rep and explained that I wanted to cancel the account but was having trouble online, he asked me to wait a second, and put me on hold. He then came back and said, “I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to cancel any products.”

My thought was, “I believe you, but why are you wasting my time telling me this? I was already on hold, why didn’t you transfer me to someone who could help me?” The answer is that GoDaddy was intentionally making it harder for me to cancel.

The same thing happened to me with NetZero two months ago. I was trying to cancel a dial-up account that I was using as backup, and the rep kept trying to trick me into agreeing to “suspend” the account instead of canceling, meaning that in two months my card would start getting charged again. This is after me saying multiple times that I wanted to cancel.

What this has to do with Honey and Vinegar

The old saying, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” applies here. If you want to keep customers, make them WANT to stay with you, don’t make it hard for them to leave you. A typical example of that second approach: companies who send unsolicited e-mails and then add multiple steps to the unsubscribe process, making it harder for you to unsubscribe.

GoDaddy was trying to keep me as a customer using vinegar, making me want to avoid the cancellation process because I had to keep asking for what I wanted. I don’t know why the web button wasn’t working, but the rep was clearly making it harder than need be, and I don’t believe that was an accident. The result? I’ve still cancelled but now I’m annoyed too.

What could have been honey here?

1. They could have asked me why I was cancelling, thereby listening to me as a customer and potentially identifying an issue they could resolve.

2. They could have offered me a pricing break, a free month, or add-ons. I’m not saying that companies should offer freebies to everyone, but in some cases, such as customers who have spent a lot of money with you, or who have been with you for a long time, you could offer them a deal to keep their business.

Just to be clear, I’m not writing this piece to solicit anything from GoDaddy, my hosting decision had already been made. But my frustrating experience with them did lead me to think about how honey and vinegar fit into business strategy.

Build your business strategy around honey not vinegar, you’ll get much better results.

Figure out how to make people want to be your customers, and how to make your customers want to stay with you. The recipe? More honey, less vinegar.