So around 10 days ago MediaTemple had quite a large outage which affected a significant number of users. Whilst the outage itself was bad enough for most customers, the communications and seeming lack of a 2-way discussion with MT had much to be desired, ultimately leading to quite a public backlash.

During and after the events of that weekend I (via an open letter), and a number of other users took the claims of what ultimately wrapped itself up as bad customer service to Media Temple in the vague hope that something would be done to change it. I’m glad to say it has! I’ve gone from a customer looking to bail out asap to a customer very happy with the service – Here’s how they did it:

Improving Direct Communication

The first great improvement from the Media Temple team has been their direct communication with customers. One of the biggest problems during the outage 10 days ago was the seeming lack of a human response from MT, only adding to the frustrations of users.

There is a lesson to be learned here, especially with companies who are jumping onto the likes of Twitter as a direct to consumer communication tool: don’t take the half baked approach. As soon as you get onto Twitter, people assume there is some kind of human element driving the comms, and assume they will get a response. Ultimately they’re using it as another means of communicating directly with your company. If you don’t respond, you fuel fires that needn’t have started in the first place.

Media Temple learned that lesson the hard way. The negative effect of ignoring your customers on a communication tool can be huge, and was so in this case. God knows how many existing customers they lost and how many potentials, just by keeping schtum through arguably their biggest outage.

What’s good to see though is Media Temple’s enthusiasm to listen since that time, and also to make positive change. I’ve seen it for myself, you only need to do a Twitter search for “mediatemple” to see the positive outcomes of conversing with your customers. Users are mostly now talking positively about the company which is exactly where any company wants to be. We all know people are mostly persuaded by recommendations over anything else, that’s certainly why I chose Media Temple in the first place.

Phone Calls

This is another great step in the right direction by MT. They are now proactively calling users directly to discuss issues and nipping any potential large scale backlashes in the bud.

A great tip for anyone serious about customer service. So many times I have been told by a company that they will call me to sort X out and I never hear from them – especially hosting companies! MT are going one step further and calling people anyway, just reaching out regardless which is good to see.

Explain What Happened

This really used to annoy me with previous hosting companies, and to be honest I did experience the same with MT before the outage. They fix something that was broken that affected your service but don’t allude to why it broke and how they are going to avoid it happening in the future. Really, how helpful is that? You get your service returned, but what you really care about is it not happening again.

What you probably don’t know is they are doing something about it, but they just aren’t telling you. MT have turned that on it’s head and are now blogging full descriptions of how problems occurred on their network, and what they are doing to resolve them which is fantastic news. It really helps the user to understand what happened and they feel like they are part of the solution – Another great tip!

Ultimately the customer is always right

MT are taking this on 100% as far as I can tell. In the space of 2 short weeks they’ve changed from a faceless company wearing ear muffs, to human beings embracing their customers. This is a massive turn around in that space of time and I’m pretty impressed. Everything about their communications with users has changed, from bland cut and paste responses to personal, direct messages. I’m amazed why big companies don’t do this, because it works… it really does.