I’ve always had people asking me what is the secret behind retaining customers long term. LogicSupport has been in business for over 6 years now, and serviced several customers since its inception. I am so glad to mention here that some of our first time customers are still in business with us. It is an amazing achievement for our team because this trust is something we have earned over the years and there were certainly no shortcuts to achieve this.

As a webhost or any business for that matter, choosing your customers can have a profound effect in running your business. If done right, it can do a world of good to your future business and if done wrong, there is no worse mistake you can possibly make. They try to hack your data, gain illegal entry and even sabotage your entire business. I know that being able to choose your customers is a luxury these days, when you are trying your best to stay ahead of the competition. I also know that choosing alone do not win long term clients, it takes a lot of hard work and followup.

A retrospection in this regard is the order of the day in the wake of a customer who tried to ruin our business not long ago, after a series of threats and black mailing incident. Vladimir from prelovac.com signed up as a regular customer through our server management promotion program. He came to us with one big bargain, promising a review if we do our job well. Little did I know that he was going to use this tool to black mail us and get the work done without making payment.

His server security was tightened with all the update sent to him with relevant details. He went through the server security list and spotted, a feature listed in the website was not performed in the security report. It is well known that certain security features are incompatible with certain server environments. In such cases, we will only install what is relevant to the prevailing server environment. He immediately opened a ticket with us in our support queue demanding the missing module to be installed. The tech on duty explained to him that the installations were carried out after checking compatibility, but he demanded the changes should be updated immediately.

Since he needed to see the change anyway, the admin went ahead with changing the settings of the web server. The admin performed the installation and finally completed it with the changed settings. Client finally saw that the conflicting settings made some of his existing sites to not load as desired. All those changes had to be reverted and we did it as quickly as we could. As anyone in the hosting security management knows, web server recompilations involve some downtime and when the customer approved this reset, there was very little we could do. I tried to call him several times and keep in touch with him all through the matter, but he either never picked the call or it went to his voice mailbox. I even sent him an apology on behalf of the admin, just to make sure the client understands why the admin carried out the re-installation of the web server, only to learn they were misinterpreted.

He demanded that he should be issued a refund since he wasn’t happy with the service. We issued a 100% refund as per our customer satisfaction guarantee policy, though we know the server underwent all the required security setup.

I got an email the next day, asking me to compensate further for the downtime, with $2000 worth of damages and one year of free service, failing which he will write a public review and wreck our business. Why would be ask for one year of free service if he doubted our abilities? I tried to call him again trying my best to make sure things remain cordial. He never picked my calls.

I sensed the matter was out of hand and that he was really trying to get free work done and was resorting to blackmail. I refused to give free service or any further servicing of his server and offered to cancel immediately, to which no response was arrived.

As he went public, a reputed forum pulled down his thread after they realized he was trying to drive traffic to his personal blog prelovac.com. I gave my reply in one of the forums about his intentions but he never came up with a response to the community members, instead he decided to post the review in his personal blog with comments disallowed.

Let this story be a lesson for anyone who is signing up customers in a frenzy. Please know your customer before you take them in. It is best to cross check your customer history, especially of those who signup for your smallest plans. They may simply be seeking an entry to your business process, but their intentions may be different. I have seen hackers who signup for start-up plans and eventually screw up the entire server and the hosting owner’s business. Please try to stay away from them…