Two weeks ago, Rackspace, the San Antonio-based IT hosting provider, announced their Fanatical Support Promise.
Sounds like a PR campaign, huh?
Only, it’s not. These folks mean it. As they put it:
“It’s the no excuses, no exceptions, can-do way of thinking that Rackers [Rackspace employees] bring to work every day. Your complete satisfaction is our sole ambition. Anything less is unacceptable. Working hard 24×7x365 to support you is more than our job. It’s who we are. Our driving purpose is to take care of your business, to make sure things go as smoothly as possible. And if for some reason they don’t, you’ll be surprised at the lengths we go to make things right. Any issue you have is quickly taken care of by your own expert Rackspace Support Team, so you’ll never have to worry about it again. Ever.”
Did they just say, “Your complete satisfaction is our sole ambition?” That’s just about the most forceful customer service attitude I’ve ever heard, and I wanted to call it out as an example for anyone else who’s planning on being known for their support. You should steal their idea — but only if you mean it.
This is a great strategy, but they’d better be able to back it up because the long and short of this promise is that Rackspace will break any contract their customers have signed with them if those customers are unhappy. That’s a pretty impressive stance for an IT host. It basically kills the contract, but it extends a big hand to potential customers. It also means they will actually have to perform for you, which is the way I personally like my subscription-based services. I like to be able to cut them off if I’m unhappy. I’m petty like that.
What makes this promise really impressive to me is that it empowers customer service reps to step up and provide authentic help — to do whatever needs doing to get things done. That’s a key detail that most stodgy corporations get very wrong: They prefer their reps to be nameless and faceless and by-the-book. I wasn’t surprised to learn, then, that Rackspace is also on the 2008 list of Money magazine’s 100 best places to work. I also notice that Rackspace recently announced their 4,000th customer. Sounds like they’re doing a heck of a lot right.
Is it possible to actually be this awesomely incredible at customer service? Probably not, but it’s certainly possible to try, and they are apparently willing to try harder than anyone else.
This sounds like more than just customer service to me. It sounds like marketing. Smart marketing.
[Rackspace is on Get Satisfaction.]
4 Comments
Isn’t the idea of terminating a contract in cases where the clients are unhappy detrimental to the service provider? Or, it’s just your way of saying that their service never fails? There’s nothing against you, but I guess that one is presumptuous…..as what most sales talk appears, right? :)
Don’t take this at face value. My company has had terrible service issues with Rackspace over the last couple months, and eventually informed them that we were terminating our contract under the Fanatical Support Promise. They said fine, and tried to bill us a $5000 cancellation fee.
vistual Ass(istant): Sorry for the delay in responding. I suppose it could be perceived as a bad strategy by Rackspace. Perhaps it’s risky, but if they can pull it off, it would be pretty impressive. I guess I’m saying that it’s an audacious strategy that resonates with me as a consumer — that kind of no-nonsense guarantee.
Tom: That sounds bad. Would you want to start a conversation on Get Satisfaction about that? If that is truly the case, I wouldn’t want that to go unheard by people that follow Rackspace conversations on our site. We have an employee of Rackspace participating, and I’m guessing he’d like to offer some kind of help to you. If you can add that topic to our site, here’s the spot: http://getsatisfaction.com/rackspace
Thanks for commenting!
This is a great profile for venture business online and marketing customer service strategies. Just the type of expert submission if a question arises in Q&A at linkedin.com. So many highly educated folk and certified certificate holders seem to ask in that forum how to create good customer service and retention. Like with all those degrees and education, dealing with people’s service expectations and giving a result is a big mystery. Superb blog post. Thanks and will give Eric author the due credit if this article is an EXPERTISE supplement.