Here’s an inside scoop on GoDaddy’s operations, performance and their strategy.
Positives:
Low Prices for Domain Names and Transfers.
Negatives:
Extremely poor customer support.
Extremely poor domain expiration policies.
Extremely poor auto-renewal policies(auto-renew for 2 years before the expiration date.)
No refunds for unauthorized or erroneous charges.
Customers with expired domains are charged$80/domain to re-purchase them.
GoDaddy blocks GoogleBots and IPs for Eastern European countries.
Case Study 1:
In a one month sampling of 100 telephone support calls, customers were placed on hold from 25 - 45+ minutes. 25% of customer calls were dropped out of queue.
Case Study 2:
Over the same period, 50 support emails were sent to Godaddy. The average response time was 1-2 hours. The average number of exchanged emails was 6 per issue with and without resolution. Emails were not read carefully by Godaddy customer support. The initial responses were from a list of canned answers that neither addressed nor solved the sample issues.
Overall:
Godaddy offers the second lowest prices for domains next to 1and1.com.
Website user experience is below average with confusing and inconsistent layout and navigation.
Customer support is extremely poor.
Company: GoDaddy.com
Annual Sales:$25 Million
Employees: 340
President: Bill Parsons
Marketing: Staphanie Heck
PR: Denise Seomin
Sister Company: Wild West Domains
Spin-off: Starfield Technologies
Strategy:
’Walmartized business’ - Maximize marketshare by underselling all competition and recouping profits through sheer volume and reduced operating costs. In other words, Godaddy offers the lowest fees for domain registration and transfers, but has the poorest customer support system.
Barriers:
Low margins. Competing companies that cannot sustain itself with equally low margins will eventually either be forced to reduce their margins or to exit the business.
Growth:
Scale-out by creating new brands, such as creating sister companies that offer similar services.
So how does Godaddy.com continue operations when their margins are so low? They’ve reduced their call-center’s capacity to support customers. Although this reduces short-term costs, the long-term effects are negative since the cost of retaining a customer is much lower than winning one back. In an attempt to minimize customer issues and turn-over, Godaddy has re-worked its website several times to improve user experience.
Alternative Registrars:
1and1.com over GoDaddy.com for pricing.
Godaddy.com over 1and1.com for rightful ownership information.