Last week, millions of websites went down when GoDaddy became the target of a DDoS attack by a hacker known as “AnonymousOwn3er” on Twitter.
Later, GoDaddy claimed the outage was due to internal server errors and not any kind of attack.
Regardless of what actually happened, GoDaddy had a big mess on their hands.
Two important things had to happen:
1. GoDaddy had to fix the problem.
2. GoDaddy needed to communicate with affected customers and try to make amends.
They finished #1 last week. And they took care of #2 this morning with the following apology email:
I like this email because it does not attempt to blame anybody or anything.
It’s a pure apology email.
And it seeks to make amends with affected customers by offering a 1-month credit against future purchases.
I know GoDaddy customers were angry last week. But GoDaddy handled the situation well.
As King Solomon observed, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”
-Ryan M. Healy
About Ryan M. Healy
Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including BoostCTR, Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising, and business growth, has been featured in publications like Feed Front magazine, and is a regular contributor to WordStream.com, BoostCTR.com, and MarketingForSuccess.com.
I launched my freelance copywriting career on June 13, 2005. Much to my surprise, I landed three clients in the first two weeks. If you'd like to discover how I did it, then click here now » |
{ 14 comments }
I agree! They handled this situation relatively well.
Gerrid
Thanks for your post and shedding some light on this recent issue. I received an apology email with a credit from Go Daddy last week but prior to receiving that from them, I was unaware there had been a problem! I’m glad like you said that they are handling this well. :-)
Julie
Hmmmmmm
I haven’t received the apology email yet. Maybe it’s not made it’s way to Europe but I have dozens of domains registered with them, premium dns etc.
Looking forward to that email…
If you have a hosting account with them and your site went down, you should be getting the email at some point.
Ryan,
I don’t have a hosting account with them, only 2 remaining domains with them. I received the apology letter last week.
My guess, it’s taking their servers a while to crank out all these emails.
True. Millions of emails probably can’t be sent in a single day without triggering all sorts of spam filters.
I got my email today. It was about their Premium DNS service which went down too. Maybe they sent that out later.
The apology got me 2 extra months of the product.
Ian
Hi Ryan
I think the headline could have been improved by using “Please Accept Your Enclosed Credit”
“Accept Your Enclosed Credit” sounds more like an order to me… maybe I’m too sensitive.
cheers
Warren
Yeah, I agree. I might have changed the wording altogether to say:
We’re Sorry.
Here’s an Account Credit to Make It Up to You.
Well, while I agree that the apology was timely, the recompense offered, or restitution, was almost meaningless. While I don’t host there, I currently have several dozen domains registered there, after hundreds of domains purchased there over the years.
My “apology” letter came with a coupon for 30% off domain purchases and renewals for the next 30 days. Lame…. I can always find online coupons for at least 30% off their domains and at least 20% off for renewals. Like I said…lame.
That kind of token restitution in the face of serious damage to their reputation and credibility is why I will be moving domain registration to another company ASAP.
Stephane – Great observations.
I only have a couple non-critical sites on GoDaddy, so the impact to me was minimal.
But what if a commercial website that generates tens of thousands of dollars a day was down for 6 hours? That is a massive financial impact, and the account credit would be insulting and angering.
If you’re hosting a critical site on GoDaddy that’s generating 5+ figures a day, then your IT person owes you an apology as well. GoDaddy is a decent entry level product, but for that scale of business you should be hosting appropriately.
Great point, David.
I see where you’d suggest that Warren but in case you were wondering the actual e-mail subject line from go daddy was:
“Please accept our apology and your enclosed credit”
So they definitely were polite in the subject line, and after reading the entire e-mail when I received it; “Accept Your Enclosed Credit” actual is an order because in order for you to get the credit you have to accept it within 7 days of the e-mail.
I don’t think they could’ve said it any better.
That’s just my opinion though,
-Chris
P.S. nice topic for the blog post
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