There was a time when at Hawk Host well I guess it was probably Devoted Host I knew exactly who every single one of our customers were. xyz.com oh that’s John from New York and abc.com that’s Jenny from California. As I was working on migrating Saturn to the new hardware I kept seeing all these accounts and I had no idea who they were. After a while I decided to look the sites up and sure enough they were customers of ours and were paying I simply never encountered them or I don’t remember. To be fair to myself a lot of these users have never made a single sales, billing or support ticket so I would have to remember them purely off if I set their account up or not.
I guess we’ve gone well past our humble beginnings at this point. Not all our customers know who I am and I don’t know who they are. We’re no longer using 3 dinky low end servers and essentially just me running support. We’re now running over a dozen high end servers with a full support team in place to handle the number of customers we have. We try not to treat everyone as a number but to myself some users are exactly that. I don’t know whom they are so to me they are just a random site on our servers. I guess they would not even be a number to me I’m not aware of them at all apparently. I do know some users though even new ones who have called or make memorable tickets or have a site I may very well visit once in a while.
I guess this was inevitable with our growth that I could not remember every single customer we have when we have thousands of them and our client base seems to double every six months. I was just recently in a meeting with our accountant and we tripled last corporate years revenue and of course profits were up just as much and such. It’s exciting I suppose and for someone like me who wants their hand in everything that goes on in the company it becomes difficult. I suppose it’s progress it just means Hawk Host is self sustaining even if I became sick and was in the hospital for months things would continue to operate like normal.
Good to hear you’re making such great progress!
It is, of course, inevitable to know every single one of your clients when you’ve got twelve servers (nearly) filled with accounts. Right now, those accounts may sometimes seem like just a number to you, but the thing Hawk Host is good at is not treating people like a number when they ask for support (even though they are unknown). I think that is Hawk Host’s best selling point (aside from the prices perhaps, but in the end, support is what it’s all about).
It’s to be expected. In the words of Clay Shirky, fame happens.
Definitely a cost of progress, but from the customer side, I think you maintain a sense of approachable-ness via Twitter and the blog. So, while you lose the sense of feeling like you “know” each customer, the customer still has a sense of knowing you–which helps continue to grow the business 🙂
At the rate you work, you might end up in a hospital for being overworked. It’s time you give yourself a good break and let your staff handle the daily operations. It’s also not a bad idea to let go and see where the system breaks in your absence. Too risky? Perhaps. Worth a try, though…otherwise how would you know if your infrastructure is robust enough.
Anyhow, it’s very encouraging to know Hawk Host is growing in leaps and bounds. Congrats to you and your awesome team!