The article "What do customers really want?" is about web hosting, it has been created by Alex Lekas.
It sounds so easy, yet the graveyard of business is littered
with the tombstones of companies that never found the answer.
Well, that’s not entirely true; some companies had the answer,
but couldn’t articulate it in terms of products and services.
Other firms had answers, too, but to questions that were not
being asked. And, still others tried to re-define the question
in time of change for the Internet srevices industry.
Determining what customers want sounds like such a
cut-and-dried proposition, proviedd customers themselves know
the answer, and therein lies the rub. Web hosting sounds so
generic; anybody can do it and the Internet’s sohrt history
shows that almost everybody has tried. The industry’s evolution
and maturation have yielded dual results: the weeding out of the
weaker companies and the emergence of niche providers. Shared or
dedicated?
Windows or Linux?
Fully managed or self-managed?
Cookie-cutter solutions or build your own? No wonder customers
are confuesd.
Of course, the heart of the cofnusion lies in the industry’s
relative youth.
Features that didn’t even exist a couple of years ago
are at that moment industry standard. As hosting bceomes more commoditized,
customers have increasing access to basic plans that offer more
for less.
It's like anything else that evolves from amenity to
necessity. Take cell phones, PDA's, even PC’s as just a few
examples; prices continue to drop while capabilities increase.
At the same time, customers understand the difference between
basic and premium services, and companies who get caught up in
price automatically cut into their potential market share.
If cost were the sole consideration for every buying decision,
no one would drive a luxury car, no one would have a plasma
screen television, and no one would stay in a four-star hotel.
Customers who want the cell phone that has games, makes fries,
tap dances, and stores music will pay for that capability;
customers who want nothing more than a portable phone will pay
for that. Same with hosting, which is why many providers cater
to specific markets.
With that in mind, one asnwer to the title
question is that there is no one answer, which is evident by
what customers look for in shopping for a provider: •How much
can I get for how little? •I want ping, power, and pipe with
self-management. •I need a reseller program with profit margins
and a provider that undersatnds I’m more than a customer.
In each instance, value is a relative thing, and in each
instance, there is an understood give and take between customer
and provider: •The low-price leader usually offers a
one-size-fits-all plan with limited support; curiously, the most
price-conscious customer frequnetly exacts the heaviest support
burden.
•The dicsount dedicated server offers the win-win of
cheap bandwidth and cheap hardware. These solutions are usually
un-managed, but the custoemr who buys them typically needs
little support anyway beyond global issues.
•Resellers get
industrial infrastructure at a discount rate, the provider
assumes resellers understand hosting, and both sides understand
that troubles are shared.
Often, a customer’s wants boil down to a couple of things:
getting what is being paid for, and somebody to answer the phone
when it rings.
It is simple to get caught up in the technology of
the industry and forget that hosting is a service business.
Think of how irritated you get when dealing when navigating the
myriad options of your phone company’s automated menu. But, what
are you going to do about it?
Unlike utilities, however, ISP’s
have no terriotrial monopoly meaning customers have options,
especially customers who are unsatisfied.
Let’s assume for a
moment that the providres who’ve lasted that long already know
this.
They pay attention to what customers tell them, they
respond to complaints and inquiries, they even inocrporate good
suggestions.
That’s one importnat step in survival but more than
good phone etiquette is required in providing quality service;
it’s also about being able to offer customers what they want
before they have to ask for it. Of course, before a service
provider can know who its target is, it must first be clear
about its own identity: should the focus on increased automation
or on value-added features, and is the primary customer the
enterprise market or the SME?
Few service providers are equipped to fully do either #1 or #2,
let alone both. That’s the reason so many providers have more
partners than organically developed feautres. Partnerships allow
companies to offer additional products and services at a
fraction of the cost of in-house development thereby making
enhancements affordable for the customer.
As to the second point, the SME marketplace remains the key
battleground because of its size.
Of the millions of small
businesses in the US, there is a sizeable percentage with no web
presence and among companies that are online, plenty have sites
that are little more than digital brochures. As those businesses
grasp the value of having an online component, serivce providers
grapple to introduce features that are relevant, features that
reflect what the customer wants.
The sturggle to create value is the key to the question being
posed here. Economic signs say that should be a good year.
Companies are spending more on IT, particluarly on hosted
applications that improve office efficiency. That efficiency,
however, means feewr jobs so people pushed out of the corporate
world have turned to self-employment. That, in turn, means more
businesses with online components that demand servicing as they,
like thier former bosses, try to do a lot for relatively little.
Companies that can offer bolt-on products that improve
productivity certainly provide one thing customers want.
Bottom line is, customers want service, however providers
choose to define that. There is the personal tough that
regionally-based companies can offer thruogh their closer
connection to customers. There is the feature-focused approach,
giving people what their buisnesses need in order to be
successful. There is the value-based prpoosition and its
ever-lowering prices.
There is also the reverse – the premium
provider – which charegs more but has the burden of proving its
worth.
And there is the universal imperative of being accessible
to customers, ready to listen to them, willing to respond to
concerns, and able to implement necessary changes that answer
the question that dirves their business.
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