Brette Rowley | Server And Hosting Blog

12 Jun

Planning For The Unexpected

By its very nature, the unexpected is difficult to plan for. That makes it easy to push down to the bottom of the to-do list while there are more pressing, very real, issues to address.

Taking a few easy steps to help your business prepare for unexpected challenges like changes in the market or natural disasters will help minimize your exposure and give you the peace of mind you need to grow your business.

So, we’ve compiled some tips to prepare for…

Economic Downturn

Economic downturn is inevitable. If you’re in business long enough, you’ll experience seasons of prosperity as well as leaner years. Take advantage of the prosperous times by preparing for a future downturn to protect your business from the whims of the market.

Start by establishing an emergency fund that can go towards essential expenses in the event that revenue starts to slow. Once you’ve begun contributing to that “insurance policy” of sorts, set aside time to develop a business plan based on reduced expenses. What functions could be reduced or eliminated? How would you maximize your marketing budget without compromising operations?

Planning ahead will help you avoid making knee jerk, and potentially detrimental, decisions when a downturn arrives.

Disaster Preparedness

While half of business owners own an insurance policy in case of natural disaster, far fewer have taken the additional steps necessary to ensure business continuity in the event of flood, fire, or other disaster.

While your technology partner can help with this, it’s important to understand your company’s process for backing up files and data. Replicated cloud services are a great start to avoid disaster.

You might also consider making structural updates to your physical location if you are more prone to certain disasters – for example those in a flood zone.

Cybersecurity

As high-profile cyber attacks have been featured in the press in recent years, most companies have taken some steps to secure their data. However, you might be shocked to learn that less than half have secured their customer data and consistently dispose of confidential documents securely. Even fewer (27%) have trained their employees on confidentiality protocols.

Those numbers are truly shocking when you consider the volume of sensitive data transmitted each day.

At Softsys Hosting, we recommend implementing a third-party security management program managed by our professional team that is dedicated to keeping your data secure. More best practices for data security can be found here.

Online Reviews

For a largely digital world, businesses are disproportionately prepared for online reputation management. In fact, only 24% have a crisis-management plan in place to address negativity online.

That number makes sense when you consider that nearly a third of businesses who have had a negative review believe that it led to a loss of business.

Competition

Planning for competitors encroaching on your market share is the first step to winning in business. After all, keeping the customers you have is often much less expensive than acquiring new customers. Prepare for new competition by maintaining a high customer retention rate and constantly re-assessing the value you provide to your customers.

*All statistics pulled from the Bank of America Business Advantage Spring 2019 Small Business Owner Report

09 Jun

How To Increase Customer Retention: What Do Customers Really Want?

Have you ever been on the phone with your utilities company trying to report a service issue? Or, better yet, trying to correct a billing error? It’s nearly impossible. These companies know that, in most cases, they aren’t going to lose a customer over these issues. What are you going to do? Go without water or electricity in your home?

Unfortunately for anyone who doesn’t own a utility company, customer retention is increasingly crucial to sustainable business growth. In today’s hyper-competitive world, your customers have options. So, unless you have an unlimited marketing budget to continually find and convert new prospects, customer retention plays a big part in your growth plan. Thus, the million-dollar question: what do really customers want?

In order to answer that question, it’s important to analyze your customer experience from beginning to end. Whether you go “undercover” as a client or hire a professional mystery shopper, getting a clear picture of your company’s service is the first step to improving your customer retention.

Ask yourself, is your customer experience:

Convenient

In a nutshell, do you make it easy for prospects to become customers? And, once they are customers, is it easy for them to contact you? This is especially important for businesses who have a low retention rate starting out. Each sign of inconvenience is another opportunity to lose customers.

Evaluate your processes, policies, customer-facing technology, and customer support functions to ensure each experience is as streamlined and simple as possible.

Approachable

Consider your own experience as a customer for other businesses. Which companies are you most adamant about using or recommending to others? Chances are, it’s those whose employees and team members are most helpful and approachable. An approachable experience not only makes each interaction more pleasant but also enables customers to get the most out of your product or service.

For example, customers who purchase hosting services from us are typically pleased with the level of service that they receive. However, when they contact us for any issue, we try to give examples for how they can get more for their money or other ways they can utilize our services. That extra level of approachability leads to higher customer retention.

Change is inevitable. So, don’t go through this process once and assume your company is in a good shape. Periodically review customer service logs, documenting any problems or hurdles that customers tend to face and determining a plan for addressing them.

Ultimately, customer retention is the basis for any company’s growth. If you’re confident that your current clients are happy and the revenue that they represent is steady, you are able to re-invest in growth strategies to target new clients.

15 May

3 Reasons To Add Value Through Strategic Partnerships

Identifying complementary businesses to partner with in an effort to add value to your customers and reach a larger audience is a great way to expand your brand awareness and gain exposure with your target markets.The key is to identify a niche of businesses that you can cultivate a relationship with to generate a long term partnership.

Increase Revenue

Looking for ways to increase revenue efficiently, without a significant investment? Strategic partnerships offer small businesses the opportunity to grow revenue and add value for their clients through product bundles, referral or affiliate incentives, or even as a third party seller of a partner service.

For example, Softsys Hosting offers managed servers which are a bundle of infrastructure services, server management, backups and monitoring so that a single product includes everything your business needs from a cloud web hosting server.

When considering how to grow your revenue, it can be intimidating to take on full product development or offering brand new services. Creating product bundles or additional offerings through a strategic partnership is a great way to generate additional value for your clients, allows you to charge more for the bundle, and exposes you to your partner’s client base as well.

Expand Your Customer Base

Consider strategic partnerships as an advertising channel where your direct costs are limited. If you can provide value to your partner’s audience and client list, the likelihood of them sharing information about your products and services is exponentially higher.

Not only is this exposure much less expensive than it would cost through traditional advertising, the conversion rate will be higher because the “ad” will be coming from a trusted source.

Focus on how you can provide value to their client base (not just how they can appeal to yours) and work with your partner to create an outreach campaign that introduces you to their audience.

Avoid Being Turned Into A Commodity

Partnering with businesses that add exceptional value to your clients helps increase client retention and customer satisfaction. This is a massive competitive advantage for your business and enables you to compete on value rather than price.

When considering potential partners, identify complementary services and products that your clients are already searching for once they purchase a service from you.

This will allow you to avoid being commoditized and stabilize your position in the market.

12 May

What Is Your Cheap Hosting Provider Costing You? Price vs. Value In The Online Hosting Space

The online hosting space is an increasingly crowded market and, for small business owners, it’s difficult to determine which option is the best for your specific business needs. Finding a partner that has a good balance between price and value can be a key component of your business growth.

At Softsys Hosting, we understand this competitive market and know that our services are rarely the cheapest option for our customers. This can sometimes cause customers to make the decision to leave when cutting costs is necessary to optimize their business. Even as customers transition away, we try to serve them as best we can through the process. That’s because, more often than not, customers return when they find out that saving pennies on their hosting service cost them much more.

How can your “value” a web hosting provider cost for your business?

Increased Downtime

Your business relies on your technology. And your technology relies on your hosting. That’s why the primary qualification for a hosting provider should be consistent uptime. Unfortunately, this is one of the first things to suffer when transitioning to a low cost web hosting service. Take it from one of our clients, Surinder, who switched back to Softsys Hosting after experiencing an outage for over 3 days. Imagine what would happen to your business if your site and systems were down for several days.

Here’s what Surinder had to say in above blog

SoftSys Hosting

It’s important to do your research and truly understand whether your hosting provider backs up their claims in regards to downtime. Understand how they measure their downtime and, more importantly, what their process is to rectify any service failures.

Lack Of Flexibility

In order for cheap web hosting providers to maintain solvency, they often require longer term contracts that lock you into a particular rate for up to 2 years. As a result, you may find yourself in a situation where you can’t afford to stay with the low cost provider but you can’t afford to leave due to your contract.

We know as well as you do that flexibility is crucial for small businesses. The ability to change and adapt with your needs and the market allows you to serve your customers better and sustain consistent growth.

Don’t jeopardize your company’s ability to adjust to market changes to save a few dollars a month over the course of a couple of years. In the words of our friend Surinder, “you get what you pay for.”

Customer Service Failures

High quality customer service costs money. At Softsys Hosting, our customer service staff is highly trained, available 24/7, and solely focused on helping our customers make the most of our web hosting service.

With a budget service, you could find yourself wasting hours awaiting a response from customer service teams that don’t prioritize efficiency.

Celestial Service is only celestial when coming back is easy. We don’t ask questions, we just love to provide the best hosting service for money that makes both of us happy. In case you are in a situation where your service is below your expectation and you consider coming back, we are here to help.

11 Apr

6 Customer Service Tips to Grow Your Bottom Line

Every business owner is looking for an edge. A secret. A leg up on their competition. Anything to increase profits and grow the business. Often, this is in the form of new technology, marketing campaigns, or even new products. However, even more often, the edge already exists in within your organization.

At Softsys Hosting, we consistently receive great responses from our customer service team and we’ve made a point to focus on that aspect of our business to set ourselves apart from competitors. We take pride in our customer service and believe that treating customers well is the key to any business’ success.

From our 24/7 support, in-house experts, multi-channel support options, and 100% consumer focused techs, we’ve developed a reputation for premier customer support which has, in turn, helped us grow our list of happy customers:

“I have utilized numerous hosting providers and none have had the level of technical support that Softsys Hosting does. Their responsiveness and precision in providing solutions is outstanding and absolutely critical to small businesses such as mine. I would highly recommend them to any individual or business in need of an inexpensive, yet superior hosting solution.”

– David Holzman

We’ve been with Softsys Hosting for over a year now and have been really impressed with them. On the few occasions that we’ve had to contact them with support questions we’ve received prompt and personal replies fixing our issues within the year at most. We’d recommend them to anyone looking for a reliable hosting package with excellent customer support.

-James Ward

Would your business benefit from raving fans like David and James? We talked with our founder and CEO, Ruchir Shastri to find out the secrets to customer service success.

Here are Ruchir’s top 6 tips for using customer service to increase profits and client retention:

Make customers feel that you are always reachable whenever they need you the most.
Ensure that your customer service agents are well trained so that they can help customers in the quickest and most efficient manner.
Provide multi-channel support so that customers can reach you through their preferred channel (email, ticket, Twitter, Facebook, phone).
Value customer’s time – don’t keep them waiting or on hold and provide them with guaranteed response service-level agreement.
Build your customer service team to stay honest and be upfront when the company or agent has made any mistakes – customers value honesty.
Improve your systems by getting regular feedback from customer service team to fix most common issues faced by your customers.

03 Oct

Serve Your Customers Better With Managed Hosting

Customer relationships are the driving force behind business growth in today’s market. It’s imperative to build meaningful relationships with your target audience to drive repeat and referral business as well as create advocates for your brand that essentially act as a sales force. While marketing, operations, and leadership are focused on this idea, it falls to the IT department to implement the communication channels, ensure the digital experience is top-notch, and provide data that drives strategic decisions.

In deciding whether to make an infrastructure change, it usually comes down to evaluating whether the internal benefits are worth the investment or the pain of changing hosting providers. Internal benefits like improved efficiency, operations, communication, and even long term costs abound, but have you considered how a managed hosting system could help you better serve your customers?

We’re not just talking faster load times and increased worldwide reach – though those are important benefits to consider. If you look closer, the ways that you can improve your relationships with your customers through managed services are much deeper.

Use Data to Drive Business Decisions

We have access to more data today than any businesses in the history of the world. We can analyze internal efficiency, consumer behavior, market trends, and beyond. With all of this information, the question becomes, “How do you use it?”

Having the right team in place to collect, store, and interpret data allows you to make business decisions based on information rather than instinct. What does that mean for your customers? You can develop new products and services that are built to address their specific challenges before they even know they need them.

With managed services, you have the capability to collect and store relevant data safely and in accordance with regulations. Furthermore, you have the flexibility to spin up new systems when the data suggests it’s necessary.

Improved Tech Support

Is your tech support team spread too thin between client service and internal management? Outsourcing hosting management to the experts enables you to reallocate your internal resources to better serve clients.

Our industry-best managed hosting service includes daily backups, 24/7 monitoring, updates & patch application, support & much more. We also provide free Plesk panel to make things easy for you. With those tasks off of your internal team’s to-do list, they can focus not only on handling client requests, but on developing more solutions to improve your customer experience.

Scale – Serve MORE clients

A period of growth is often synonymous with growing pains. It’s difficult to scale your team, client base, and sales at the exact same time. That typically means that something has to give – customer service declines, quality suffers, or your team is overextended.

With managed hosting, you can scale with ease by utilizing a team of experts to strategize and implement the growth you’re planning. Serving more clients at the same level of service they’re accustomed to.

Reliable Technology

Your customer interaction is reliant upon technology. Whether customers are calling your customer service team, logging in to your website, or leaving a review on your social media pages, technology is the backbone of your customer relationships.

Strengthening that foundation with managed hosting gives you peace of mind and your customers a better experience with your brand or company.

With dedicated managed hosting, you’ll get a fully managed hosting system that enables you to focus on your clients and leave the details to experts.

Softsys Hosting Review

Honestly, I have tried every web hosting business out there, as it took me 4 years to find Softsys Hosting and I have never looked back. Honestly, they have the best service in the world. Over the years, I have sent hundreds of support tickets, and each ticket is answered in record time. If you overlook this company you are losing out! Unbelievable, thank you guys at Softsys Hosting – you have made my life so much easier!

— Michael Ward – Sydney, Australia

03 Oct

Remove Roadblocks To Plan For 2019 Expansion

As we enter the last quarter of 2018, it’s time to begin planning for the new year. What are your goals? Challenges? Projections? Limitations? Spend the next three months laying the groundwork for your 2019 growth. First on the list? Removing any roadblocks that may stand in your way.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty can be paralyzing and is the biggest roadblock to your company’s growth. If you’re planning to expand in 2019, battle uncertainty with strategy and data. First, analyze the data that you have available to determine where the opportunities are in the market. What regions are underserved in your industry? Where can you provide additional value to your customers? Don’t have a ton of data? Add that to your must-have list for 2019.

Then, develop a strategy that uses the data you’ve analyzed to address any uncertainty you’re feeling about expansion. Visualize any challenges and how you may overcome them. Most importantly, work with experts to ensure that your infrastructure can support your strategy and deliver the data you need in the future.

Technology

Is your existing technology hindering your growth? Have you been putting off a technology upgrade because the risk or pain caused by change seems too high? Now is the time to make infrastructure adjustments that will help you better operate and serve your clients now as well as expand in the coming year.

This is a great time to consider transitioning to fully managed dedicated hosting with a provider that is experienced in helping companies scale. Look for enterprise-class secure infrastructure, comprehensive features, and tech support that you can count on. With the right technology in place, you can be much more agile in the market and scale as you see opportunities arise.

Whether your expansion will be worldwide or just down the street, preparing your systems for the growth will help ensure that your business stays running during the transition. IT & technology should help your business grow & not the other way round. At Softsys Hosting, we specialize in helping you deploy solutions which can grow almost indefinitely with your business growth.

Staff Development

Once you have your technology in place, evaluate your team to ensure you have the right resources to support expansion. Often, companies overwhelm their IT departments with internal system management, customer service support, hosting, data analytics, and more. As you grow, the need to specialize increases.

You have a few options when it comes to staff development – train, hire, or outsource. Depending on your specific needs and goals, it can be costly and time-consuming to hire new talent or train your current team members on a new system. So often, businesses are forced to “make do” with a team that may not have the expertise to fuel their growth.

Not sure whether IT resource constraints are costing your business? Here are 4 signs that it may be time to seek expert help. At Softsys Hosting, we not only provide the IT resources you need to succeed, but we work with your in-house team to make sure that the transition is smooth and everyone can focus on what they do best. The end result? A well-oiled machine that is poised for expansion.

Softsys Hosting Review

With the thousands of web hosting services out there you might think of them more or less as a commodity. That may be true for most, but we have found one that stands ahead of the crowd in just about every way. Every single time we work with the people at https://www.softsyshosting.com/ we have been amazed at just how good these guys are. Every time we submit a support ticket, they respond within a few hours with a detailed solution. They will often even go above and beyond and do the work for us. You can image how refreshing it is to submit a complex support ticket and then get an email from the president of the company less than an hour later saying they went ahead and took care of it for you an no charge and asking how else they can help. FlashDrivePros.com definitely recommends Softsys Hosting for all your hosting needs!

— Ryan Stutzman
Vice President

14 Sep

4 Signs That IT Resource Constraints Are Costing Your Business

Are you confident that you have the right skill sets within your IT team? Do you have visibility into your technology expenses? Does your IT department adequately support your company’s vision for growth?

Whether in the form of leaky profits or opportunity cost, chances are the challenges you’re experiencing in your IT department are costing your business.

Overextended Team

Many IT teams within small and medium sized businesses are required to serve in many capacities that make it difficult for them to specialize and focus on innovation or strategic growth. This reactive approach means your team is constantly maintaining the status quo rather than pushing forward.

This approach means your company is burdened by an enormous opportunity cost. Enabling your team members to automate the standard functions, specialize in areas that they are specifically skilled in, and bring on experts to fill in the gaps means that your IT department can serve as a proactive partner in your company’s growth.

Deferred Growth

Do you have projects and initiatives that have been sitting stagnant on the “to-do” list without any progress? For example, have your employees been asking about a work from home policy, but you aren’t sure how to implement a mobile office?

If you find that new projects are a challenge for your team, it may be time to examine the resources you have within your IT department. Certain initiatives require specific skill sets and it’s important to find a partner that supplements your existing team with the experts that can get the job done.

Consider what price you’re paying to wait to implement programs that your competitors are already taking advantage of.

Security Concerns

It seems that every week another data breach is reported that exposes companies to enormous liabilities. Don’t waste another minute wondering if you have the security protocols in place to protect your business. Security concerns are one area that can cost you big time if you don’t have the experts in place to manage your data.

This is especially important for companies that store sensitive information. If you’re collecting personal data, payment information, or even just storing your own sensitive data, it’s imperative that you have a solid data protection and redundancy policy in place.

In some cases, security can feel a bit like a moving target. As regulations are passed and changed, you’ll need to adapt with them. A perfect example is the recent enforcement of the GDPR regulations.

You need the experts on your side to give you the peace of mind you need to get back to what is most important.

Profitability

IT is often an overlooked department when it comes to profitability. Sales and marketing are scrutinized. Operations work within a specific budget. IT, however, is largely seen as a necessary evil rather than a strategic advantage.

Evaluating your infrastructure, personnel resources, and IT assets will allow you to ensure that the department is supporting the business appropriately (and profitably).

SoftSys Review

I have been using hosting service of Softsys for more than a year. Probably it is not the cheapest service, but it worth every cent I spent. Definitely they have one of the best support team. It is fast and intelligent. Read carefully technical stuff provided by the company and if it is ok give it a try – you will not be disappointed.
— Vladimir
CFO

12 Sep

Adoption Of Improved Cloud Solutions Determines Business Success

Cloud based IT solutions have long been the domain of big corporations and enterprise-level integrations. Smaller, tech savvy organizations began adopting cloud services a number of years ago, yet it almost appeared to be a fad disappearing from the business landscape. However, over the last 3 years, cloud computing has seen a resurgence within the small and medium enterprise space.

As the technology matures, experts and business owners alike are finding that the ability to establish a competitive advantage through cloud-based services far outweighs the potential risk or pain of transition. In fact, 56% of cloud users say that their organization has a competitive advantage as a result of using cloud services as reported in research from the Cloud Industry Forum.

Mission critical business software such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management or Software Development Platforms are installed faster, serviced better, enjoy reduced operational cost and scale much easier with varying business needs.

How can cloud computing positively impact your bottom line? Hosting experts perform these services for a large customer base which means you have dedicated resources with better economies of scale.

Reduce Operational Costs

Struggling with budget constraints and increasing costs within your IT department? Moving your operations to the cloud helps reduce capital expenditures and increase profitability. This means your business has the funds necessary to re-invest and boost innovation.

Taking advantage of cloud computing and storage offers small and medium businesses economies of scale so your IT environment can grow with you. No need for a massive upfront investment in equipment and infrastructure that can paralyze growth. Instead, reduce your spending on software and skilled employees by partnering with a cloud hosting provider that can manage your environment as you grow.

Increase Efficiency – Scale Better

Align your company operations and increase efficiency through cloud-based automation and process management. Setting up workflows, templates, and rules that deploy automatically allows your staff to spend their time most effectively and shortens the time frame from conception to implementation.

The bottom line? You don’t have to invest in new hardware for a temporary increase in sales or commit to infrastructure that you only need for a short time. Your team doesn’t need to waste time with mundane administrative and maintenance tasks. You have the agility you need to adjust on the fly.

When your IT operations are optimized through a cloud solutions partner, you free up employees to focus on strategic tasks to serve your customers better.

Improve Productivity + Mobility

Empower your team with cloud-based connectivity and collaboration tools. In today’s world, teams are often spread across miles and time zones making it difficult to move projects forward without the proper infrastructure. Through cloud services, you can make sure your team stays connected with each other and your clients around the world.

According to the Telework Research Network employees working at home use 60 percent of the time they would have spent commuting actually doing work. AT&T says that it gets five hours more work per week from its home workers than those in the office.

If increasing your company’s mobility has been a priority that you’ve avoided due to the complications it presents, cloud services may be the perfect fit to move the initiative forward.

Speed To Market

With cloud services, IT provisioning no longer takes weeks to organize. You can have systems set up within a matter of hours which gives you the resources you need, whenever you need them. This dynamic scalability ultimately means you have flexibility in bringing new products and services to market. That flexibility means you can compete more confidently and effectively.

SoftSys Review

This is the best hosting provider I have found. The support is always quick and helpful. They actually help you troubleshoot issues instead of just redirecting you to their FAQ. I have never noticed any downtime. Control panel is simple to use and not clogged up with advertisements. I have switched all my sites to Softsys and would recommend it to everyone.

— Mark R

22 Jun

Know The Warning Signs That Your Business Could Benefit From Managed Hosting

In the lifecycle of any business, there are certain stages, rites of passage, or turning points that enable further growth. Remember when you started out and you wore 150 different hats from sales to HR? As your business grows, you have the luxury of specializing tasks – both for yourself and your team.

One of the most beneficial points in your business’ growth is the ability to turn over your technology support to the professionals. Whether you’ve managed your IT personally or tasked your HR manager to take care of it, there comes a point when your business has scaled enough that IT becomes more than just a necessary headache – it can become a strategic advantage to fuel further growth.

How do you know if your business could benefit from managed hosting?

IT projects sit on the to-do list for weeks.

Updating your website, technology, or adding systems get pushed to the back burner because you don’t have time to research how to do it, then try to implement it. Plus, what if you accidentally break something? Without a dedicated professional to manage your online assets, it’s difficult to make necessary improvements.

You know your technology could better support your business.

Do you have the same hosting provider, support team, and infrastructure as you did when you started your business? Maybe your team, client base, and revenue has grown but your technology hasn’t grown with it? Finding a hosting provider that can scale with you and provide services above and beyond your current needs is crucial to businesses who are looking to maintain a steady growth.

New employees throw a wrench in your process.

New employees mean new email addresses and phone numbers, not to mention new hardware. If you’ve ever had a new employee show up on their first day without their computer ready for them to use and their phone set up, it may be time to seek out some help.

You dread change because you’re not sure how it will affect your IT systems.

Above and beyond new employees, an acquisition, software upgrade, or even new data regulations all could have major impacts on your infrastructure. Take the recent changes to information and data storage with the GDPR. Wouldn’t it have been nice not to stress about what that meant for your business and simply rely on professionals to ensure your compliance?

When you experience technical issues, it feels like you have to go around in circles to find an answer.

Sick of trying to track down the person or support team who can handle your issue? Feel like your issues get passed from person to person with no one taking responsibility? With managed hosting services from Softsys Hosting, we know that the buck stops with us. Our support team is available around the clock to make sure your issues are solved ASAP.

Think your business is ready to turn your IT into a strategic advantage? Contact Softsys Hosting today to learn more about how we can help.