Service Untitled

The goal of a customer service interaction (except at some companies) is to get the customer’s issue resolved in a timely manner and to the customer’s satisfaction. When I called GoDaddy this morning, they did exactly that.

This morning, GoDaddy emailed me saying some of my domains had just expired. I had meant to renew them, but have forgotten to. They included their phone number right in the email, so I gave them a call.

The phone menu was pretty simple. I wanted sales / customer service (the first option) and I needed help with domain names (again, the first option). I had my customer handy, but most have forgotten a digit or something. The phone system said it couldn’t find my customer number and was transferring me to a representative. A few seconds later, I was talking to a human.

The guy (I think his name was Scott) asked me for my customer number again, verified my name and call PIN, and asked how he could help. I told him that my domains had expired and I wanted to renew them. He assured me this wouldn’t be a problem and quickly looked which domains were expiring and when.

We quickly identified which domains had expired and he confirmed that I wanted to renew them. I asked if there were any discounts and he managed to get a few dollars taken off the price. I told him I was ready with a credit card when he was. He asked if I had a card on file and I said I didn’t think so, but apparently the card I was ready to give him was on file. He confirmed the order, charged my card, and I was done.

He didn’t try to upsell me that much during the call, which is something that GoDaddy, a relentless marketing company, usually tries to do. Another thing that surprised me was how quick the call was; from the time I dialed to the time I hung up was about 5 minutes.  This is really great and certainly makes the experience a lot more enjoyable.

There are some things companies can learn from GoDaddy in this situation:

• They clearly included their phone number in the email (thus making is easy).
• They made billing flexible and easy (thus making it both fast and easy).
• Their systems are designed for fast and easy transactions, especially for common things like domain renewals (thus making it fast).
• They remind and notify their customers about what’s happening with their individual accounts frequently (there are different schools of thought on this).