HostPapers - article Rackspace Honors Websketching for Customer Service

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - January 21, 2008 - The recipient of Rackspace Managed Hosting's inaugural FANATI Award for Outstanding Customer Service, to honor the customer that has best demonstrated customer service excellence, has been revealed.

Website design firm for small to medium sized businesses, Websketching, is the 2007 winner. As an industry-leading service company, Rackspace introduced the FANATI to recognize the customer service excellence of other companies in an effort to promote customer service among all businesses today. Award applications, available only to Rackspace customers, were accepted online through the MyRackspace customer portal. Customers completed the online applications, which included questions regarding how the company delivers and tracks customer service as well as success stories of going above and beyond for customers. Rackspace then reviewed the applications and a short-list of nine finalists was announced.

Christine DeGraff, Co-Founder and partner of Websketching noted, ''By limiting the geographical area we serve, we can take the time to personally meet with our clients' at their place of business so that we can better determine the needs of their business. My clients trust that our goal is to help their business succeed, just like Rackspace. In just one year at Rackspace, I have seen Fanatical Support firsthand. It means that I do not have to wonder if my request has been received or when it will be done; but a peace of mind knowing that my request is always immediately acknowledged and that every request is treated as important and completed in as little time as possible. This is something I try to duplicate to my clients.''

Finalists moved on to the second round of judging which involved two scoring categories. First, their application was critiqued and graded by a panel of five service industry experts including Joe Wheeler, Executive Director of The Service Profit Chain Institute; best-selling authors and speakers Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg; Phil Terry, CEO of the Creative Good; and Frederick Mendler, Vice President of Fanatical Support for Rackspace's Managed segment.

In addiiton, in order to validate the finalists' applications, a customer satisfaction survey was sent to the nine finalists' customers. Based on the survey results and the judge's scores, Websketching proved their customer service excellence and came out on top due in large part to a near-perfect customer satisfaction score. Rackspace will begin accepting customer applications for the 2008 FANATI in July.

In comments left on the survey about Websketching, Patricia Smith, Secretary of The Woodstown-Pilesgrove Business Association said, ''As a business association, we were in need of a website; however none of our members had any technical experience. Websketching listened to our thoughts and ideas for what we wanted and developed a product that perfectly encompassed our vision. Websketching was extremely thoughtful of our needs and guided us throughout the entire process in a pleasant and non-intimidating manner. They designed a website that is both professional in nature and visually attractive. Working with Websketching was like working with a friend.''

Rackspace announced the creation of the award at its Customer Conference, held every October at its San Antonio-based headquarters. Representatives from Websketching will attend Rackspace's annual company kick-off this January, where they will be presented with the FANATI trophy by Rackspace President and CEO, Lanham Napier.

Mr. Napier remarked, ''As the home of Fanatical Support, we wanted to know how our customers approach customer service in their respective industries. As a company whose mission is to become one of the world's greatest service companies and which is a two-time winner of the American Business Awards's Best Customer Service Organization, we believe we are experts on customer service. Through the nomination process, we saw many of our own customers that take a similar approach to customer service and we're glad to be able to recognize the one that stood out the most.''

Websketching is a NJ based web design company offering a full range of website design, development and marketing services to clients located in the NJ/PA/DE tri-state area. Websketching specializes in creating custom website designs that can be equipped with their proprietary content management system.

Viewed as a critical investment in customer communication, the MyRackspace portal is continually evolving with major updates released on a bi-monthly basis. Additional new features include:

-- Firewall Control Panel allowing authorized users to manage firewall permissions in real-time

-- Suggestions Center enabling greater collaboration among the Rackspace customer community and creating an additional channel for Rackspace to listen to customer requests and share its extensive hosting knowledge

-- Ticket attachment giving customers the option to securely attach a document to support tickets and provide more information to their support team about issues or queries

-- Release Communication Center containing portal release information as new versions of the MyRackspace portal are launched every other month

Upcoming developments to the MyRackspace portal will include customer access to historical availability monitoring data as well as Managed Backup Threshold Alerts to provide an early warning system that notifies customers before reaching critical backup subscription usage.

A recognized global managed hosting firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a service organization delivering enterprise-level web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 15,000 customers across eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company's award-winning Fanatical Support. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company's inception.

To learn more about Websketching, please visit: www.websketching.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

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