registrars GoDaddy Retention Fall-out

They have gone from the best to the worst customer service registrar on the internet, what can you say ?

Eric, great point raised and I am going to be discussing this at an exclusive Godaddy round table next week with Godaddy India executives to seek answer on how they are looking to get over this one!!

Definitely troublesome when they have everything rolled out in a platter for new customers and us as the long time (loyal) standing customers get the left-over shit!

My thought on GoDaddy having poor customer retention isn’t rooted to the price structure of newer members having deals. If you take a closer look at GoDaddy Domain Discount Club; yet it costs to belong to, it can save you money and you don’t have to pay the “$14.95” renewal fee, rather $8.37 to $8.47.

If you work out the numbers, this can save you much more than Uniregistry can at their $12.88 pricing for a .com. In addition to this, they provide you with free Cash Parking Premium and Auctions membership, a value of $133. You could quite possibly earn more if the revenue share is higher with Cash Parking on some of your domains and being able to sell your domains on one of the largest sales platform, which is an added value of being a member of Domain Discount Club.

The problem with customer retention doesn’t lie within how they provide coupons to get new users and make them pay more the following year. To an end user; or a mom and pop shop, an increase of $2 a year to $15 a year is negligible. Only to domain investors who have hundreds, if not thousands of domains, is this noticeable.

With GoDaddy, the problem is quite simple and clear. It’s right in your face. Try calling GoDaddy and see if you get the right response the first time or if you’re not passed around the customer support merry-go-round over the phone.

The problem is how they treat you once you are a customer. That is a core value that GoDaddy is losing each day and if it isn’t fixed, they will not only lose a large volume of domain speculators, but businesses as well.

I would rather pay the $12.88 up front with Uniregistry and have quality support than to pay $15 to wait on the phone for 20 minutes to get a correct answer.

Additionally, if GoDaddy does attempt to call me and I don’t answer, they don’t leave a message as to why they’re calling. Rather, they expect me to call back; in my case having to wait 30 minutes on hold due to having to speak with the night shift support, to explain to me that my GoDaddy Auctions membership is about to expire.

This is something that I already know. I will purchase it as a bundle the next time I buy from Auctions, as I have been doing for the past I don’t know how many years. GoDaddy simply wasted 30 minutes of my time to tell me my Auctions account is about to expire, when they could have left a voice message instead of having me call back.

They’ve also called for various up-sell reasons, which I declined, wasting even more time by not leaving a message.

I know that doesn’t fall under customer support per say, but they really need to evaluate their callback system as well.

This year, GoDaddy has become noticeably less domainer friendly, unless you have thousands of domains with them.

With a large account, you can negotiate better pricing with them.

Joseph Green said:

With a large account, you can negotiate better pricing with them.

Click to expand...

As you can with Uniregistry marked right on their homepage with a seal stating, "Custom discounts on ... .com / .net / .org ... Contact us today!"

Other registrars such as Fabulous are domain investor friendly with 7 tier discounts ranging from $9.99 to $8.49 for .com domains.

However, do research on GoDaddy, Fabulous and Uniregistry.

You will notice that while GoDaddy has cheaper pricing if you work with them and have more domains, they may charge extra for privacy.

GoDaddy seems to be very ambiguous when it comes with this new information in comparison with pricing schedules. I cannot find that they give some domain investors discounts without being a member of Domain Discount Club or any reference thereof.

While you may say the same about Uniregistry not publishing their discounts, this could be reassurance to you that you're going to speak or get a hold of a live person who cares about your business and needs to help you out as well as subtly stating that they are there for you every day. A clever marketing ploy.

Though from experience, I can say they are there for you every day: either on a plane, at the airport or in another country, I will get a response.

I think at this point my domain discount club still see's me paying more than just being with dynadot

Strange, because acquiring customers is expensive, usually retaining them is reckoned to be cheaper than acquiring them.

Just seems a lot of these big companies don't think that any more.

The Godaddy lack of a ticket or email system is terrible, a real confidence buster.

carob said:

Strange, because acquiring customers is expensive, usually retaining them is reckoned to be cheaper than acquiring them.
Just seems a lot of these big companies don't think that any more.

Click to expand...

You got that right. There may be several reasons for this, but one is that they like to pump up the numbers at the expense of the longer term. Bob Parsons, for all of his faults, understood how to treat his customers better than most. Now that Godaddy has been sold off, I don't expect things to get much better.

They have the advantage of being the market leader, and of getting more eyeballs. But it's nothing that can't be lost. Lots of registrars are offering god prices to domainers. It's also a normal business practice to offer discounts to volume customers. The idea of paying money to get discounts through a "discount club" just rubs me the wrong way. Especially from a registrar that originally took over the market mainly because of its competitive pricing.

For the sake of clarity, when people are talking about GoDaddy support, are they talking about regular support or premier services?

I agree, GoDaddy's customer service has declined over the past few years. The same thing happened to Moniker. Once customer service is gone, the customers are soon to follow. Every now and then throw your customers a bone, so they are aware you still care about them.

BTW - You need to tell the person transferring to Uniregistry, that at $12.88 their prices are still outrageous. They need to transfer names to a registrar like Dynadot, Fabulous, or someone else who can offer sub $10/yr renewals.

jdk said:

BTW - You need to tell the person transferring to Uniregistry, that at $12.88 their prices are still outrageous. They need to transfer names to a registrar like Dynadot, Fabulous, or someone else who can offer sub $10/yr renewals.

Click to expand...

As I previously mentioned, I would take a look at the seal on their main website offering discounts for .com, .net and .org (as well as others) if contacted. This may put you sub $10/yr transfer and renewal that could possibly even beat Tier 7 at Fabulous.

Surely the domain business have some different specifics than the hosting business, but my experience have lead me to a slightly different take on the subject about initial and renewal pricing. Not talking about GoDaddy, but on a more general note...

Having a pricing policy with very low initial prices and subsequent higher pricing is a double-edged blade, especially if the difference between the two is big. Many new companies misuse that trick because they cannot find a unique trait to compete with, so they rely on pricing. But embracing such a tactic they often forget that they need money in the bank to sustain that business model. An year or so later they are already deep in the red so they eventually disappear, leaving their dismayed clients on their own.

But this tactic can actually have a good and logical usage. Introductory pricing, especially for annual services, gives a new client a great opportunity to affordably test a service for a long time before they decide if they wish to continue with it. In that period, the company has to do what they can to showcase their benefits - extra features not considered by the customer, knowledgeable customer service, reliable uptime, investing in innovation. So when the end of the period comes the host can justify their renewal pricing. If the client is happy, they will be more than happy to invest more, knowing that this company is there to stay and is a reliable partner. So you increase retention and gain loyalty not by pricing, but by quality. A big remark here has to be made to companies employing this method is that they should always give clear indications of what subsequent prices one should expect (often put as Standard Price) and to be completely honest to any potential client that asks.

Here is where the controversy comes in that scenario. We all know that there are types of customers that are simply price-driven, when the prices go up they immediately jump to the next cheap ship. Those types of clients, like many others, already have experience with multiple companies so this type of pricing should not be new to them. As a host we often (if not daily) receive queries about renewal pricing before a person signs up. Great! That is the way it should be - people learn from their mistakes and when they see a price they consider super-cheap they should question it, they should demand to know details, the fine print if you wish. But even though people's understanding of this business is growing they still sometimes like to play the role of the victim.

In my example those are the people who can clearly see the pricing on the website, go to the chat and ask before they sign up, even have a few chats before renewal and when the time comes they are still SHOCKED about the prices they see. So they naturally refer to the logic "So the new customers get this for $x/mo but you charge me $x+2/mo - this must mean you don't value me as a loyal client" or my other favorite "Well Host X has a promotion for $x-1 at the moment, can you match that". For the end user the business model looks like this - on the initial price the host is making minimum profit and on the renewal they are just going greedy and looking for a bigger. When in reality such business model requires initial pricing to be way before the profit mark and the renewal pricing is the one that brings profit. The more people leave pre-renewal, the harder will the company strive to keep alive.

Again, there are hosts and HOSTS just like there are clients and CLIENTS. Hypocrisy is a pretty strong word but in the particular occurance mentioned might as well be, not familiar with the case in details and certainly not trying to defend GD

The thing is GoDaddy's target audience isn't domainers - it's small business owners. Domainers are cheap. Small business owners have no problem spending $14 per year for a domain renewal. They also have web hosting and webpage builder which are also intended for small business. GoDaddy is simply going where the money is, but yeah, their service is still sub-par.

sbweb said:

The thing is GoDaddy's target audience isn't domainers - it's small business owners. . . . GoDaddy is simply going where the money is

Click to expand...

That's a great point. It's unfortunate, though, because much of GoDaddy's initial success was from domainers. It'd be nice if they were still respectful of that and catered to us at the same time. We are practically their Founding Fathers!

They have not learned what the Lifetime Value of a customer is. Especially a customer lost. They're not alone either.......... The bigger they get, the less they care.

sbweb said:

The thing is GoDaddy's target audience isn't domainers - it's small business owners. Domainers are cheap. Small business owners have no problem spending $14 per year for a domain renewal. They also have web hosting and webpage builder which are also intended for small business. GoDaddy is simply going where the money is, but yeah, their service is still sub-par.

Click to expand...

This is how domainers (that want credit for GoDaddy's success?) use GoDaddy to register domains.

Cool, a 99c coupon.
Let me register 10 names on 10 accounts using their "1 use per customer" coupon posted on a forum.

And then Let me translate what most are saying about GoDaddy:

"GoDaddy sucks because they refuse to take a loss on every one of my domain purchases"
"GoDaddy sucks because they don't have support willing to talk to me 24-7 for the products I just spent an average of 10 cents on"

Grace Delete said:

"GoDaddy sucks because they don't have support willing to talk to me 24-7 for the products I just spent an average of 10 cents on"

Click to expand...

It doesn't really matter what a customer pays. A customer is a customer - and if competitors provide more for the money that's where customers will go. If a customer is gaming Godaddy, that's another issue.

If Godaddy doesn't want domainer business, that's also another thing. They say they do, though. It's really their own business decision whether to offer 99 cent codes. I'd rather see them offer competitive prices on renewals. If the problem is those 99 cent domains, they should simply stop offering them rather than take the loss out on their other customers.

Grace Delete said:

"GoDaddy sucks because they don't have support willing to talk to me 24-7 for the products I just spent an average of 10 cents on"

Click to expand...

I have names that i have been paying renewals on for over five years with godaddy, it was their choice to stop the [email protected] service, which was one the most reliable ways of dealing with customers concerns, so can't say i think the same of them anymore, as for coupons, many don't work if you're not in the U.s or if you are in the domain discount club? But i have hung in there, although now i am considering a change to dynadot

But nodaddy are consistently turning a loss right ?

discobull said:

For the sake of clarity, when people are talking about GoDaddy support, are they talking about regular support or premier services?

Click to expand...

WTF is "premier" about not having an email address to email if you have a problem anymore & having to use their crappy Live Chat feature that many times aren't available or having to wait 20mins for?

I have to ask. What support do you all need so desperately all the time?

sdsinc said:

But nodaddy are consistently turning a loss right ?

Click to expand...

With what I've seen go through GoDaddy aftermarket expired auctions over the past few days; the knowledge that a coupon can't be applied to renew it, I highly doubt that they're turning a loss if domains are selling. There would be no reason to take a company public if it were losing money left and right.

Grace Delete said:

I have to ask. What support do you all need so desperately all the time?

Click to expand...

I don't need support with GoDaddy, I'm just fed up with their callback system. Just please leave me a voice mail as to why you're calling so I don't have to wait in a queue to speak with a night shift worker to tell me something I already know.

You also have to consider that GoDaddy doesn't just do domain names. They've got hosting, dedicated servers, bookkeeping, invoicing and a multitude of other services that need support as well. To some, installing a SSL certificate is as simple as clicking a few buttons. It could take an end user who got it up-sold a lot longer to install, provided their host doesn't help out and that they don't require technical support from GoDaddy hosting to install it.

htmlindex said:

WTF is "premier" about not having an email address to email if you have a problem anymore & having to use their crappy Live Chat feature that many times aren't available or having to wait 20mins for?

Click to expand...

Good point.

Since I'm a relative small-fry, I guess I just assumed that everyone on here was also dealing with premier services. I agree that GoDaddy's regular support sucks and I'm so glad that I don't have to deal with them anymore, but I think it's incorrect to say that they don't care about domainers when they've created a support team specifically for us. I don't think I've experienced a minute of hold time in the last couple of years, and the people in this division actually know what they're talking about and have addressed any issue I've brought to them quite competently. I honestly can't think of another registrar that offers support that is anywhere near comparable.

I am sorry but I have always received exceptional service. Nice, fast and answered my questions. Am I one of the lucky few or am I just one who does not mind waiting several minutes for assistance? I am a newbie so I may be just ignorant as to what is expected. I will say I had one experience that I thought was rather unusual if not unprofessional. The employee persuaded me into renewing several domains immediately as she stated they would never be able to acquire them on the open market for even $500.00 a piece. I still had a week and was going to anyways but I found that very strange, Do they work on commission?