In my overnight email last night was the latest customer newsletter from Dreamhost, the hosting service I use for this blog, and with whom I started a relationship in February.
One of the things I like a lot about Dreamhost is their frequent and relevant communication. Not so much the email newsletter but rather the way in which this company approaches keeping customers in the picture about overall service and, importantly, what’s happening when things go wrong.
To that end, there is the Dreamhost Status blog which, during the past few weeks, has had daily entries talking about wide-ranging issues they’ve been grappling with and which have had significant and negative effects on service. Outages, mail not working, you name it and it has been happening.
It hasn’t affected every customer, though. I’ve not experienced anything alarming other than the occasional time when this site just has not been available, usually for a very short time and often late night my time. Liveable-with, so to speak. Still, I do make daily backups myself from the server.
The email newsletter I mentioned has a link to an extraordinary post on the Official Dreamhost Blog that chronicles in exhaustive detail what’s been behind most of the quite serious service issues the company has experienced in the past few weeks:
As I’m sure most of you already know, we’ve had nothing but troubles, large troubles, for pretty much the last three weeks. A lot of these troubles were our fault, a couple of them were at least ostensibly beyond our control, and they all compounded each other.
Whether you’re a Dreamhost customer or not, you have to read this account. And see the allegorical pics. A terrific example of openness, honesty and clarity in communication. With over 180 comments so far to that post, this is how to engage with your customers.
Other hosting companies and services - take note.
In June, I wrote about Dreamhost, saying that if you’re looking for an excellent host, these are the people to go with.
I’ll say that again: if you’re looking for an excellent host, these are the people to go with.
