As the Client Services Manager for Diagram, my top priority is to provide the best experience to both our Hosting and Development Clients. In this day and age of technology, there are many layers to maintaining a website, which can often be unclear to clients. As a client, if your website is “down”, it doesn’t matter the cause, you are losing business. You need it fixed yesterday. This often becomes a challenge when our clients either Host or Develop with a secondary company.
A Hosting or Development Problem?
In Hosting, our first concern is looking at power, bandwidth, and uptime. Is the server OK? Is the client’s site over-utilizing its resources? Are we seeing any outages? All these answers are only the first part in the troubleshooting process. Once all physical layers have been confirmed, the application layer is next.
Not all applications are created equally. Today, there are multiple content management systems (CMSs) out there that a client can choose from. Each has its own set of rules, its own set of requirements, and its own set of issues. A Developer is needed to troubleshoot and resolve any issues with the CMS software. If a client only Hosts with Diagram, there is a handshake that needs to happen from us to the Development Company. As the client, you need a fix, and now you have to start over with a new company. This causes more frustration and puts you in a situation where you are the one managing the outage, rather than us. It is not the intent of Diagram or other companies who we work with to cause this pain point, but we often see it escalate quickly if the root cause is not found after both parties have investigated the issue. This is most apparent if the client’s issue is intermittent and not a “constant down”, as it gives false hope to the client that some one is doing something in the background and just hasn’t completely resolved the issue yet.
All The Experts in One Place
Now, there is hope! The most gratifying part of my job is when a client’s issue is fixed, explained, and we are able to give preventative measures to avoid it in the future. If you Host and Develop your site at Diagram, the troubleshooting process allows us to use all the experts in one place and the Support Team to manage it for the client. My Support Team works with both the Hosting and Development Engineers to investigate, fix, and keep in contact with the client throughout the process until a resolution is reached. Any testing or reboots required can be scheduled as soon as they are requested, as there is no lag time to go between more then one company. Also, any Engineer, whether from the Hosting or Development department (or both teams together), can contact the client directly to perform one on one testing with the client.
At the end of day, you need your website to work. It may not matter to you who provides these services to your company, but by using one company for both Hosting and Development, you can greatly reduce the time and effort needed to resolve any issues that affect your site. Client Support is not often the first thought when choosing a Hosting and Development solution, but it should be. When you need a team to isolate, manage, and fix your issue, you should only have to make one call and know that it will get done. Do you have any questions about how Diagram can help you make sure your site is working from both a Hosting and Development perspective? Please contact us, and a Diagram Solutions Engineer can help you come up with a plan that ensures any issues affecting your site are resolved as quickly as possible.
