It’s hard to gain new customers, but it’s even harder to keep existing ones. I was about to switch to another hosting company this morning, but a 5-minute online chat stopped me from making this decision.

If you own a website/blog, you should know that the customer lifetime value in web hosting industry is very high, which means one customer can bring hosting company long-term revenue, similar to mobile network companies. This is why hosting companies invest so much in customer relationships to keep existing customers happy.

I was thinking about switching all my hosting services to mediaTemple because of their great reputation on speed, and all the positive comments I heard from friends. I even contacted them for information about the services and they responded me in no time. I was going to switch when this current hosting plan expires, which will be next week.
As I was trying to create my Posterous blog (which will be launched soon) with this current hosting with IXwebhosting, I had problem with the DNS settings, so I got on to the 24/7 online support. In 2 seconds, one of the representatives greeted me and asked how he could help, I told him the problem and he set up everything for me from his side in 5 minutes in excellent manner!

I was very impressed and promised him that I would publicly thank Vadim Chichkanov from IXwebhosting.
So that quick 5 minute chat kept me for at least 2 more years in their company.