On Monday morning GoDaddy experienced a major crisis when thousands of their customers’ domains and websites went crashing down. As a dominating company within their industry, this was a big deal. Thousands of businesses were left without websites and you can imagine the onslaught of frustration, anger and annoyance that flushed the web in an attack against the hosting company.
However, when I went to their Facebook page to see what customers had posted to their wall, I found this:
Check out the dates of these posts. Since today is Thursday, September 13th, something very strange is going on here. Either nobody what-so-ever directly posted their grievances to the hosting company’s Facebook page since the crash, or GoDaddy is deleting all negative comments posted to their timeline. So I thought I’d ask them. Here’s what went down:
“A” for response, only they didn’t quite answer my question, did they.
However, this (#fail) aside, when it came to communicating with their customers on social media throughout the crisis, the hosting company did a great job at keeping their customers informed. Check it out:
GoDaddy’s Social Media Crisis Communications
First thing’s first, when (I suppose) the comments came flooding into their Facebook timeline and they were made aware of the situation at hand, GoDaddy posted their first response to the crisis on Facebook, alerting the public that they were aware of the situation, and that they were looking into it.
This post was followed by a number of timely updates. Even when there was nothing to report, they still updated their frustrated fans and customers (you’ll also see that they rightfully kept all comments from their fans posted to these updates, which contain a mixture of both positive and negative sentiment):
Right up until the issue was fixed and their customers’ sites were back online:
The same updates were tweeted from their Twitter account:
So in terms of updating their customers, fans and followers during the crisis, GoDaddy kept up with this in a timely and efficient manner.
After the issue was resolved, on September 11th, the CEO of GoDaddy, Scott Wagner, published a news release to their website:
Within this news release, Wagner did a good job at answering some important questions, such as:
- What happened?
- What did you do about it?
- Was my data and information at risk?
and GoDaddy clearly took the blame and apologized to their customers. The fact that this release was followed by a private email to their customers who experienced the impact of the crisis (see below), really amplifies the fact that GoDaddy was sincerely apologetic and shows that they care about their customers to the level that we, as customers, love to see!
When concern started being expressed that some had not received this letter of apology and refund, GoDaddy posted the following update to their Facebook page:
The verdict is in: Pass!
So, in terms of social media crisis communications, I have to give GoDaddy credit and a passing grade! Throughout this hectic time, they did a great job at communicating with their audience, calming nerves, and making an effort to right their wrong and show true sympathy to their beloved customers. As the leader in online domain and website hosting, I would have expected nothing less from the brand.
The big question: Will their reputation suffer?
Considering that this is not the first crisis the brand experiences as of late (there was the whole elephant shooting fiasco and of course their pledge to support SOPA), it’s quite possible that some customers are simply tired of all the drama around the brand and for that reason will choose to take their business elsewhere. However, on account of this crisis alone, I think that GoDaddy did a great job at handling the crisis and communicating with their audience, and the sentiment that I’ve found online seems to consist mainly of positive praise and support towards the company for handling the crisis and making amends with their month of free services to all those affected.
What can you do to protect yourself from falling victim to a crashed website or domain?
No matter who you host your domain and/or website with, experiencing a crash of this sort is a risk that we are all subject to. Here are some tips on how you can protect yourself and your business in advance:
- Build your network on social media
- Build your email list
By doing both of these things on a regular basis, you assure that, even if your website is left in the dark, your voice and your reach won’t be.
- Back up your website on a regular basis
- Have a dark website ready to go on a different server – and have alternate domains hosted by a secondary company
How do you feel about the way GoDaddy handled this crisis? Were you a victim of a crashed website? Share your thoughts and experiences with me below!
Author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, Melissa Agnes is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is a coveted keynote speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today’s leading organizations faced with the greatest risks. Learn more about Melissa and her work here.
Melissa,
Great analysis. I think it merits an update on our show next week.
Sounds good! 🙂
Love that picture of you by the way, Rich!
Hi Melissa,
Once again, a great post. I thoroughly enjoy reading you and do most everyday. 🙂
Mine were among the many whose sites that went down on Monday as a result of the GoDaddy crash. It came on the heels of my email provider interrupting service for more than a day. I did a post on my blog comparing and contrasting the responses that your followers might enjoy. Short review: GoDaddy long ago earned my loyalty, though it was tested last year when Parsons shot the elephant. They didn't disappoint me this week. My email provider, on the other hand, seems not to care about me at all. Those who want to read the post can do so at http://t.co/c9fjP76t.
Wiley
Wiley!
Sorry to hear you were a part of the many caught in the crash. Though Im glad to hear that you were satisfied with the way that GoDaddy handled the crisis – both as a customer AND as a crisis manager!
I just read your comparison on the subject and my you've had quite an inconvenient week! Glad to hear that the worst is over and thanks for sharing your experiences with me and my readers! 😉
Thanks for the lovely compliment as well, Wiley!
Speak soon,
Melissa
Great job Melissa. I had no problem with any of my websites, both hosted at GoDaddy, anyways, they send me the email which is, a great and well executed crisis management. I just learn about all the other efforts they put on this issue. To me the got an "A".
You were one of the lucky ones, Jose!
In terms of crisis communications via social media, they did very, very well!
Did you get the month of free service, even though you weren't affected by the crash?
Yes Melissa, I got the month free service but none of my two websites had any problem.
That's very good for GoDaddy as well! 🙂
As someone who worked on the domain registrar side for over four years before moving on, coupled with being keenly interested in social media crises recently, this topic fascinates me. Thanks for sharing your detailed thoughts.
As an answer to your big question, Go Daddy knows their reputation will suffer in the short term anyway. In the long term, coupled with their intense marketing efforts, they’ll eventually pull through.
One thing going for Go Daddy is they have at least one case with more-or-less sufficient data to give them an idea how to handle crises like these going forward. Not to “plug” my own site, I shared my own thoughts about this back then:
http://davezan.com/thoughts-godaddy-sopa.html
In essence, Go Daddy will do minimum things like acknowledge people’s feelings about this and empathize (or apologize) depending on the situation. Like anyone else, they’ll only do so much yet take things as they come.
Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’ll pass by from time to time, especially with your other writings making sense when it comes to this topic.