I have used www.godaddy.com for my web hosting for probably close to 5 years or so. I would say that I am a loyal customer as I have half a dozen domains with Social Gastronomy’s website and email hosting being there, as well.
So, if I am UPSET enough to write a blog post to describe the poor customer experience as a case study of what NOT to do, you can understand the magnitude. Comparably, my wife call the president’s office of a our national bank office when they charged us unnecessary fees from the way that they do their deposit accounting practices.
If you are reading this as of thursday morning, I have been without my social gastronomy email for 22 hours. I don’t mean that I can’t access it, I mean that if you email me, you get a bounce back. The rest of the team can get email so feel free to email them, but I can’t get GoDaddy to fix the problem.
It started with our desire to upgrade our email from GoDaddy’s standard POP email account to the hosted exchange service. We were trying to coordinate calendars virtually which was killing our productivity. Ironic…
We signed up for the product and found out that it woudl take 2 hours to port the MX record over from one product to another. Called customer service and they did it manually. Score one for GoDaddy. Very polite person. Score two.
However, I had a problem with how I set up my particular account, you had to use a weird naming convention till you could port the domain record over. Ok, did it. Didn’t work so she suggested that we delete the particular mailbox. Ever have that “I don’t think this sounds right moment”. It got stuck. She did some checking and found out that we had to delete our mailboxes on the old plan before starting the new one. Ok, that was inconvenient, but was quick. She does email me the instructions for getting outlook to work. Good job.
All of them worked, but mine. She tells me that it takes time for some accounts to populate with the new MX record. Now, having been involved with the web for 15 years as a product manager, marketer, etc.; this doesn’t sound right if all but the one account that was different now doesn’t work. Well, then I do some testing and find out that my particular mailbox is now bouncing emails. She tells me to call back in a couple of hours after the record populates. Then sends me a customer service “how did we do” survey.
Ok, so now I have no email, no plan to fix email, and a nagging feeling of panicked “My email is boucing”. So, I call back in to find someone else. Explain the situation. She tells me that if one works then the others work. So the first person was wrong in telling me to delete AND doesn’t understand how they manage MX records.Cool. However, she can’t access my email address and since I am in a car, I have to call back in after my next meeting.
I get home from my meetings and call again. I explain the situation to the 3rd customer service person that I have now talked with about my lack of email. He agrees with me that this is a problem. He then does some checking and confirms that the reason that I can’t re-add my email account is that it is hung up in the deletion process on the server. He needs to open an escalation ticket to get it resolved. Great! We are making progress….
It will take 24 to 72 hours to resolve. In the meantime, “why don’t you create another email address with a variation of your name…” I explain in a panicked voice that I have all of my business cards and contacts who use this email address and need this escalated faster. “Can’t do it, Sir.” He does very politely send me trouble ticket email.
So 15 hours later…. I call back in to find out how I get email back. I get another customer service rep. No help. I ask to escalate to the group as he doesn’t have access to their work queue. Tells me that it is 24-72 hours. I ask for his supervisor, who he grudgingly connects. Now at Customer Service Rep #5. Who proceeds to tell me can’t help, can’t escalate, can’t provide information, can’t see the queue, and since it is in Arizona, no one is in the office to work on it (implied), but he can’t tell me that information for security reasons.
Beyond Being Angry, What do I Know about What is Going on?
1. Unfortunately, this is pretty common for customer experience across many industries and size companies
2. It is fixable. AND they need to fix it as it a real indicator of potential business issues. If I didn’t think it was fixable, this would be a twitter post on why this company SUX and why I am never using them again… etc. I don’t think that they are bad, just that they have mediocre customer service and antequated support systems. There is a better way.
3. When a loyal customer starts to consider moving their accounts because of poor customer support, ineffective systems, and slow response times; you have a problem. It takes 2 hours to move a MX record (switch providers), but it takes 72 hours to fix a problems. You have a problem…..
4. If your call center systems and processes are designed to shield your employees and not allow access to people who can actually address customer problems, you have a bigger problem….
5. This is why customers are taking to social media, blogs, etc. to vent and to CIRCUMVENT your antequated customer service infrastructure. Either I get help from someone who actually knows what they are doing OR I am venting because I get the standard call-center “I understand, but don’t really care” response.
6. This is a major concern for a lot of organizations; Customer Service who gets managed against customer ratings, Sales which loses opportunities, Marketing which loses ability to influence the narrative on the company, and the CEO who gets hammered on the web everytime a pissed off customer vents about their poor service.
How does this relate to Social Media?
1. I am actually using this to see if they are monitoring social media and twitter to see if they will respond to a public complaint as I am stymied within their call center.
2. I found 523 GoDaddy current employees near their corporate headquarters on Linkedin; including their CTO…
3. 56,400 hits for “I hate godaddy” on Google
4. GoDaddy Sucks has 64 members on Facebook, GoDaddy had 65 members.
5. Do a search on Twitter for GoDaddy, this is what you find…
6.The first 2 pages of search on godaddy is standard corporate messaging from GoDaddy. If I were a new customers, I would discount this messaging and look for the real scoop. Hence a search on twitter, facebook, and linkedin. If I was really interested, I would go to the more technical social media platforms for technical discussions, etc.
7. I am annoyed more than angry, but I want my email account fixed AND I want to see that I can get better attention due to my urgency. Going into the blackhole of customer service is not going to be acceptable as consumers become more adept at researching providers on social media sites to understand the real scoop. Providers will have to become more responsive and understand that a pissed off customer doesn’t just tell 10 people anymore, they tell EVERYONE….
8. I am posting this at 10AM, now down almost 24 hours. Let’s see if they are paying attention. I will update when I hear back and what form they communicate.
One last point, this blog post is hosted on GoDaddy…
Matthew Rosenhaft
Principal
Social Gastronomy
mrosenhaft@socialgastronomy.com (when it works)
In the meantime, you can reach me on twitter: www.twitter.com/mmrosenhaft
4:30PM Update: Got a canned email that they fixed my email. Never got a response from this blog post, tweet, linkedin or facebook status update. GoDaddy is definitely not monitoring social media.
