Hosting Company Can Learn From ‘Whole Foods'
What can your cheap hosting company learn from Whole Foods? Plenty! Take a look.
Sustainability
While your cheap hosting company can't really nourish anyone's body with organic, healthy food, it can make less of an impact on the environment. If you are able to offer a renewable energy source, great! Wind power is a great way to accomplish this, and companies like WindHost and CanvasDreams are doing it right now. AISO.net relies on solar power, operating 120 solar panels that can generate 60 kilowatts each and every day.
If that's a bit more than you can afford, you can purchase certified renewable energy credits (REC) in order to offset your carbon footprint. Companies like ThinkHost, HostGator, and GreenGeeks do this. RECs are purchased by the hosting company, and that money funds the production of alternative energy sources.
Giving Back To The Community
Besides offering healthy food choices, Whole Foods has a lot of great ways to give back to their community, both locally and globally.
- The company donates food to local shelters and food pantries.
- They have “community giving days” where five percent of their sales for that day are donated to various nonprofit organizations or schools.
- Employees participate in volunteer activities, helping out at different local nonprofits.
- Whole Planet Foundation, helping impoverished areas around the world to better themselves.
- Whole Kids Foundation, helping both schools and families to teach kids better nutrition and wellness habits, as well as providing nutritious foods to schools and children's organisations.
- Local Producer Loan Program gives loans up to $10 million to local producers in order to support local farmers.
Follow Whole Foods' lead and start your own charity. Maybe you could donate technology or hosting services to local schools and children's organizations. Have your own version of community giving days and donate a certain amount of proceeds to a local charity, and get your employees involved in giving back to the community. Use your blog to let the world know how involved your hosting company is.
Hosting Company Can Learn From ‘Whole Foods': Customer Satisfaction
Whole Foods' website text states, “We satisfy, delight, and nourish our customers.” You can do this too!
Offer high quality services to your customers, and make sure your customer service is second to none. Respond in a timely fashion to complaints and questions, and make sure you are able to address any outages as quickly as possible.
Education
Whole Foods offers information regarding nutrition and wellness, and you can do the same for your customers.
Offer helpful tutorials, whether a step-by-step blog post or a YouTube video, on some aspect of your hosting company. Maybe a lot of customers call tech support to get help navigating cPanel. Make a tutorial with frequently asked questions to address this, which will effectively reduce the number of calls that come in asking for assistance. Tech support will thank you!
Take a lesson from Whole Foods, and give your customers something that they can feel good about. This, in turn, will help your company turn profits.
