I read the well deserved platitudes towards Laurie Kirk after she announced her retirement this past week. One of the reasons Laurie is so appreciated is because she became the NameJet point person for so many people. If there was any technical or other issue, Laurie has been the person to contact. I know if I contacted her, she would fix the issue, get me an answer about something, or put me in touch with someone who could take care of the issue.
Every company in the domain industry should have a point person to contact. This has to be a tough job, but I think it is very helpful to customers and promotes goodwill within the domain industry.
One thing I have noticed is that people tend to fire away on domain forums if something goes wrong (or if they think something is going wrong) rather than trying to resolve an issue privately. Perhaps this is because of historical problems with companies, distrust, language issues, or a lack of customer service options. Sometimes the criticism or complaints are warranted, but some issues I see probably could have been quickly resolved with a phone call or email instead of a forum thread or comment in a blog post. Obviously if an issue can’t be resolved and it warrants extra attention, then of course calling attention to the issue is the right course of action.
There are several people at various industry companies who either have an official role as a point of contact or have become the go to person when issues arise. I appreciate that I know I can contact these people and they will resolve issues, troubleshoot with me, or connect me with someone who can resolve issues. These people build goodwill between my company and their company, and they offer additional assurance that if something goes haywire, they will be by my side to assist. I have given companies additional business because of these people.
More companies should have customer facing representatives who offer support to customers via different channels. These people have a tough job, but they are greatly appreciated.
I’m in full agreement.
I give companies with a public customer-facing representative more credibility, am more likely to use their service, and am more likely to recommend the service to others.
Even with Laurie announcing she was leaving NameJet, she provided two names of individuals monitoring the email box at NameJet going forward. AND I know who to reach out to for any issue, and who to escalate it to if nothing is happening.
You’ve made some great points, especially the part where you stated: “Every company in the domain industry should have a point person to contact. This has to be a tough job, but I think it is very helpful to customers and promotes goodwill within the domain industry.”
I think a lot of the “firing away” discussions can be avoided (as you said) by people contacting an official representative that listens privately first, before the customer flies off the handle and says something publicly that s/he may regret later.
One of the biggest causes I’ve seen of frustration is that the person starting the discussion about a company feels that they weren’t helped efficiently by traditional support methods offered and don’t know who or how to contact someone that can help them more (one-on-one) to their satisfaction.
NamePros has worked hard over the years to manually verify each and every one of the company representatives that are members of the community. Some of the biggest and well-known industry names interact with members daily on NamePros to provide support and listen to feedback. Here’s the current list of verified company representatives on NamePros to give you a better idea: https://www.namepros.com/members/?type=reps
Each one of those reps are almost always more than happy to assist anyone with questions about the products or services their company provides. We have seen many problems resolved quickly and painlessly thanks to this efficient communication channel.