Gator Crossing

Recently I read a review of the new HostGator blog. One of the comments in that entry really stood out to me.

HostGator’s appears to be aimed at selling you their service. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s faceless, and damn boring.

At first I thought, “Well, of course they are wrong; our blog is perfect!” But after some further consideration I noticed they could be right. Although I did not consider the quote very fair based on us only having three posts so far, I know this blog could go two ways. The first way is how they say it, and the second way is how I vision it. Although we will be posting coupons and promotions often, I also want this to be a fun and personal look at HostGator, our employees, and even our customers! We’d be lying if we said part of the reason for having a blog was not to promote sales, and most of you would see right through that.

Now to the point! Recently Brent sent out a very important email to the company, this went to employees only and is a great look at the direction HostGator is moving. Im going to give you the unedited version of this email. This is the first time one of these has ever been released outside of the company, heck Brent doesn’t even know im posting it! I might get in trouble, but I promised inside information and i’m going to give it to you. ;) Here it goes!

Hello Gators,

Congratulations you have made it through boot camp!

I’m sure most of you are reading this not even realizing a boot camp was going on. Let me explain…

About two months ago hostgator was at about 50 employees. We’ve been on a rampage hiring everyone that came through the door with little or no screening.

This boosted our numbers to over 100 employees with our customer base increasing only by a few thousand. Since then we have over doubled the amount of employees while only increasing customers about 3%.

When you hire as many people as fast as we did there’s going to be slackers, slow learners, bad conduct, and a plethora of other issues bringing down the performance of everyone. We’ve been very hard on everyone in order to separate the weak from the strong. We made the final round of cuts today and believe we are now left with the best. If you are reading this you are either an amazing employee or we see potential in you.

Since most of you have been hired we have been putting the focus on numbers rather than quality and truly helping the customer. Part of our boot camp strategy was to boost everyone’s numbers, and focus at a later date on quality. I have great news that will be a huge relief to most of you! Ticket counts will not matter at ALL until July 1st, and when July 1st hits we will only be doing reviews going forward. I repeat we will not be looking at your counts.

Think of this as a time to learn and improve your abilities to become a better employee.

I want this company to be ran by you the employees for the next month and a half. I’m extremely curious to see what can be achieved without management breathing down your neck about numbers. The focus is going to be shifted to quality with stress being placed on every employee to help a customer as much as humanly possible. I want EVERYONE here to think of themselves as quality control. It’s time we take our level support up a few notches and amaze the hosting community!

How do we do this?

No more fluffing tickets and passing the buck. If you aren’t sure how to help the customer don’t rest until you find a person that can. If you can’t find anyone that better mean you knocked on my door as a last resort! If I’m not here get someone to call me. Find a way to help whether it’s a chat, phone call, or ticket.

No more asking a customer to check if something is working. You better have verified yourself that their problem is resolved. If you see this done in a previous response talk to the employee.

If a customer forgot to include a domain name you better have tried looking them up by their email or past ticket history. No more needless responses to boost ticket counts. If you see anyone doing this talk to them. If a customer is upset about something go the extra mile and call them to help them with their issue! I really want to be seeing this as it is non existent currently.

If you see that a fellow employee did not help the customer PERFECTLY in a previous response track them down to correct their mistake and teach them what to do next time. If they aren’t at work make a note to do it later. DO NOT FORGET. If an employee keeps making the same mistake address it with a manager or myself. If you see someone not putting fourth the extra effort that we are now requiring address it nicely with them and if they do not improve bring it to managements attention. You are no longer going to be expected to perform well yourself, you are going to be expected to perform as a team. One mistake is the mistake of all.

Now that boot camp is over we want this to become your dream job. I need everyone’s help and suggestions in order how to make this a great place to work. We have a few really cool ideas were tossing around but are two definite changes for you…

• Every Friday will now be free pizza day for all shifts.
• We are working out details for two 15 minute paid breaks on top of your hour every day. This will be announced in the next week until then stick to the current policy.

We will also be starting to do some activities outside of work. In the next week or two I’m going to organize a hostgator paintball outing paid for by the company, so until then build up the nerve to challenge me. =)

Congratulations everyone! Thank you for all the hard work and wonderful job that you have been doing.

–
Sincerely,
Brent Oxley

Look forward to more of this in the future, even pictures and videos of the office and our company events! I am always open to suggestions, so if any of you have good ideas for the blog please let me know! Just comment, email me directly, or post on our forums. I’d love to hear from you!