HostWay

The challenge

Hostway a global Web hosting leader has hundred of thousands of customers across the globe. Keeping each of these customers informed with essential service and system related communications is a key to hostway’s day to day business operations.

The Findings

Hostway has an excellent service status service on the Hostway website. However, it wasn’t always easy to get customers to visit this site and take note of the any announcements that affect them. E-mail, the traditional method of delivering messages to a customer was fighting a losing battle. Using e-mail getting messages delivered, noticed and opened was becoming increasingly challenging. E-mail was becoming less and less effective a method of communicating messages to end users. For Hostway getting service status messages to users was an essential part of meeting their Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The Solution

Implementing distinct elertz subscription channels which ensured a user was only receiving message relevant to them. Users opt in to receive these messages by clicking a simple subscription link and downloading the lightweight Adobe Air Elertz application. As all of the elertz notification messages were explicitly requested by the end user and were delivered outside of traditional e-mail medium, users were assured of the relevance and validity of the message.

Below is a screen shot of the Hostway branded widget:

Using the elertz system rather than attempting to create their own custom application Hostway have not only saved resources on development but also on operational costs of running such an alerting service.

The Results

This increase in relevance and user trust led to increased open rates of important system messages which seen a good return on investment. In the area of support and customer service Hostway noticed a dramatic reduction of calls queries from customers. The improvement of communications means that hostway are able to get an accurate picture of notification delivery this was a great benefit when sending system notifications to customers. Elertz has also proved a powerful tool for keeping to Hostway’s Service Level Agreements as keeping users informed has always been a key component in this.