Namecheap is one of the largest domain name registrars with more than ten million domain names under management. The company boasts an active Twitter account, which is quite engaged with its customers. Namecheap CEO and founder Richard Kirkendall also engages with Namecheap customers, and I was impressed by the way he responded to a customer’s criticism this morning.
A Twitter user mentioned the @namecheap account on Twitter to criticize the timing of the company’s “scheduled maintenance” that took place the morning after a bank holiday and temporarily took down his email:
love that @Namecheap have taken all of my business/personal email accounts offline for ‘scheduled maintenance’ literally in the morning for 3 hours on the first day after a bank holiday – like could you have chosen a worse time??? do it at the weekend or overnight ffs.
— pop (@DX_1) May 7, 2019
Within an hour of the tweet above, Namecheap’s CEO responded with a contrite apology for the timing of the update:
Hello Pop, we certainly didn’t make the best decision here when it comes to our customers. I will make sure we do a better job of that going forward. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
— Richard Kirkendall (@NameCheapCEO) May 7, 2019
One thing I noticed is that the customer did not even call out Richard’s @NamecheapCEO Twitter account. Richard must either monitor accounts that mention @namecheap or his team is tasked with escalating issues like this directly to him.
I would be annoyed if my email went down for three hours right after a long holiday. I would also appreciate that the CEO reached out on his own to apologize and let me know he also thought the timing was bad. It’s not often that you see a CEO respond to a customer complaint like this.
Most of my emails are chicks from India named Denice, Gail, Brenda, Margaret: “Steve, Hope you are doing well, you have taught me plenty.”
For a while I thought these were Indian dudes posing as chicks, turns out they are actually real women that want a piece of the action.
Good to see that. As someone who values customer support, I always prefer companies with good and thoughtful support over those without.
Actually, brand name and pricing can also affect my choice. But customer support is always an important factor. Even a cool brand name and cool pricing cannot attract me if customer support is disappointing.
I’d be interested to know why email should be offline for any amount of time.
Good to see that some companies still believe in the doing the right things – one of which is customer service.
Namecheap is always my first priority when choosing domain name registrars