The title is probably the most suprising thing that I've learned running a hosting business. I think most people would prefer that I take the time to email everyone even if this means I take time away from fixing the problem and the outage lasts another 20 minutes.
To me, this is shocking. My PFY, who is even more nerdy than I am still doesn't believe that an incomplete (which is to say, "I see X problem but I haven't figured out how to fix it. I'm working on it") message has any value at all.
This is something that I think is difficult for nerds to learn, because it doesn't make sense to us. But it's true. Most people, even fairly technical people, are willing to accept slightly increased downtime for better status updates, even when those updates largely consist of "I'm working on it"
I don't know about your customers but ours want both excellent communication and for the problem to be fixed immediately. This means having more staff during an outage.
Yes, of course. My customers, though, don't want to pay very much, and that's another tradeoff. I think I'm pretty up front about what I'm selling and what tradeoffs I make, and for some people, this is a good tradeoff. There are other services that have made different tradeoffs, that work out better for different people with different needs.
I'm just a little surprised about my customer's preferences in this particular tradeoff.
To me, this is shocking. My PFY, who is even more nerdy than I am still doesn't believe that an incomplete (which is to say, "I see X problem but I haven't figured out how to fix it. I'm working on it") message has any value at all.
This is something that I think is difficult for nerds to learn, because it doesn't make sense to us. But it's true. Most people, even fairly technical people, are willing to accept slightly increased downtime for better status updates, even when those updates largely consist of "I'm working on it"