Hello there again.

My first post generated a lot of interesting and intellectual opinions on the subject matter. Now I am convinced that WHT really is the place to go when it comes to web hosting.

So as a follow up question on that post, I would like to tickle your brains again and find out how you guys think of setting the correct expectations to customers (potential and existing).

How important is this to your business? With the stiff competition in the marketplace, do you tend to over promise just to make a sale? :confused:


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Sorry I am going off topic, do I see google adsense on your hosting website? That is unprofessional and should be removed... :eek:

Removed. Thanks for the advice.

Although is does matter how high you set your clients' expectations...in practice, the majority of clients already have set their expectations way above what would be considered a realistic aim with regards to quality of services versus the prices they are willing to pay for a top notch services.

i.e. If you want to pay $3-5 a month = then don't have too high expectations. Whereas, if you pay $20 a month for the same space with another but more reputable company, then you can expect to have higher expectations.

In general...many clients want 110% standards of service & support for as little $$$'s as possible. What many fail to realise is that with top quality services there comes a price because the cost of it has to be covered.

I suppose it comes down to what end of the market a company is aiming to please.

Overselling hosting companies would find it many times harder to offer the kinds quality hosting and after sales services and support as a premium hosting company who doesn't oversell and has top notch state of the art servers.

This is not to damn overselling hosts because it's all down to supply and demand and they provide a quality of service, with the quality being debatable a lot of the time. That market's so cut throat you find a lot of them over polish their customer expectations so hard it's embarrassing.

Show me a company who satisfies every one of their customers and I'll show you the whole of the moon because you can't make everyone happy.

OWM

Show me a company who satisfies every one of their customers and I'll show you the whole of the moon because you can't make everyone happy.


True for EVERY business. Actually not just business, in EVERYTHING.

I think that for long term success, it's good to under promise and over deliver, especially for the smaller hosts. This will unfortunately most likely lead to a slow growth, but with high customer retention rates, and overall less demanding customers. Like Outlaw Web Master said, people tend to expect too much these days, and be difficult to deal with, and the more you promise, the worse it gets.

You ALWAYS have to deliver on what you promise. A sure fire way to lose clients and damage your reputation is to over-promise and under-deliver.

No expense marketing campaign or flashy website will ever compensate for not delivering on your promises. Word of mouth always reigns supreme :)

I think that for long term success, it's good to under promise and over deliver.

Agree. The principal guerrilla tactic is surprise. :D

promise and deliver on the Equilibrium -- Maximum efficiency?

I think that for long term success, it's good to under promise and over deliver, especially for the smaller hosts. This will unfortunately most likely lead to a slow growth, but with high customer retention rates, and overall less demanding customers. Like Outlaw Web Master said, people tend to expect too much these days, and be difficult to deal with, and the more you promise, the worse it gets.

I agree with ldcdc, it is more about managing your customers expectations, not setting them. Because you hope to have them for the long term so giving them too high of an expectation from the beginning is going to make it very difficult to manage in the long run.

Rob

Under promise and deliver more surely wins.

But in the webhosting industry, business owners tend to over promise just to make a sale especially those who are new in the business.

How do you battle this out? (I mean those who over promise.)

Under promise and deliver more surely wins.

But in the webhosting industry, business owners tend to over promise just to make a sale especially those who are new in the business.

How do you battle this out? (I mean those who over promise.)

Perhaps they are too busy answering support tickets for their $2.99 1000gb bw and 1000gb storage/month clients to respond to this :)

We currently offer multiple "brands" of hosting that are completely unrelated to each other. Thus, I can give a pretty good idea of how expectations in this industry work.

Here it is:

Low price == high expectations.

Here it is, in reverse:

High price == low expetatations.

In other words, the lower your price you will find you must provide more support/service. Customers are more demanding with the lower priced accounts. Our premium brand (minimum $49/month for a basic shared hosting account) has very few support calls. Our low-cost budget brand (same package, but only $29.95/year) has HUGE amounts of support requests from the customers. Usually very basic stuff about password changes, email account setup, and other things that they could easily figure out themselves by simply searching the faq or even reading the popups that appear when they write their support ticket.

I can safely say that the low-cost customers are stupid and ignorant people who expect royalty service for basically nothing.

So... expectations? There you go. The higher you are charging, the less expectations your customers will have.

That's very simplified -- I know there are all kinds of additional considerations and factors.. but in general the expectations of your customers is set by how you sell your product/service (and a large portion of that is your price).