Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a truly world class hosting experience, especially when it comes to support, trust, and transparency? I recently sat down with Panos Kesisis, COO of World Host Group and A2 Hosting, to talk about our vision for the future and the values that guide us.
From gaming as a teenager to running an agency to leading the largest part of our organization, customer care, Panos shares his philosophy on extreme ownership and support, why he believes trust is built through transparency.
It’s All About Trust With Our Customer Care Team
Caring about customers is the core of our business. As the leader of the largest part of our organization, Panos Kesisis sets the vision and values for our Customer Care team.
From Teen Gamer to Hosting Leader
Panos’ journey into the tech world came from unlikely origins. A competitive video gamer in his teens, his team needed a website to continue to grow their brand. Despite his lack of experience, Panos’ team selected him to create the site.
With some guidance from a friend of his father, he created the site using WordPress, new technology at the time. That unexpectedly set him on a career path he couldn’t have predicted.
“The most exciting thing from this whole story is, as I didn’t know how to build all these things. And I didn’t know that you have to buy a domain name.”
Panos turned to GoDaddy, the hosting company he was using at the time, to help get the site online.
“I sent them an email and two days later they responded to my email and they fixed my issue. And when I was 15 years old, I thought to myself, wow, this is amazing. One day I want to become like them.”
Little did he know he’d eventually become involved in web hosting and even end up working for GoDaddy for a time.
Panos also talks about joining Seb at TSO Host and going on to found Fixed.net and, most recently, World Host Group.
Building Trust and Transparency in Customer Care
The goal of World Host Group is to become the most trusted brand in hosting. Panos explains that trust is built on transparency, especially in customer care.
“So for me, trust is transparency.” And Panos takes this transparency to heart, acknowledging that it’s important to be honest with our customers about mistakes.
“No company is perfect. There will always be mistakes.” He went on to add, “No one is perfect, right? And for me, it’s important to own your mistakes and to be transparent about them.”
In terms of handling mistakes, Panos is clear about how he expects our customer care team to act.
“Be honest to your customers. Tell them the truth. Explain to them what happened. Detailed minute to minute explanation of what happened. Look after them.
“But honesty and transparency for me is number one. That’s how we can become trusted. And that’s how we can achieve our goal.”
Passion and Ownership Play an Important Role
Within tech industries, things change extremely fast. According to Panos, the key to remaining successful is a passionate team.
He said, “the word passion is so important and so underrated.” In his view, you need passion to continue to level up your skill-set.
“In order for you to go beyond that level, you need to be passionate about it.”
You might be a fantastic developer, but you need something driving you to continue to improve.
Panos also encourages his team to take ownership of issues, even if they cannot directly solve them. No matter where they fit in the organization, he wants his team to drive issues and contribute to solving problems.
“Ownership doesn’t mean we have to fix it ourselves. We just have to drive it.”
He goes on to explain that his customer care team is empowered to work the problem to find a solution for our customers. Even if it’s outside the scope of that employee’s role, they need to continue to drive the issue and get to a resolution.
“As long as we own the issue and we know where to escalate and we know how to fix this issue, I think that’s going to make us the world’s most trusted hosting company.”
AI Cannot Replace Customer Care and Technical Expertise
AI has, without a doubt, changed how many of us work. But Panos is committed to the human aspect of customer care.
“Obviously, the AI models are great. They help me on a daily basis. I use them for a lot of my projects. I’m not going to lie, sometimes it’s too good to be true,” Panos said.
But he reminded us that these tools are not a replacement for real care and support. He stresses the role of having humans involved in the support process.
“We need to have technical expertise. We need to have the human touch. We need to have a personal approach.”
Talking about the role of AI in support, he continued, saying, “There’s no there’s no automated way that this could work, even if I would be extremely optimistic about AI or how things can be automated in the future. I don’t see a way of this working in any other way.”
My Full Interview With Panos Kesisis Is Available Now
Watch our latest podcast now for my complete conversation with Panos Kesisis.
We go into more detail about these topics, discuss the role of aptitude in the hiring process, and joke about starting a company wide video game tournament.
Also, subscribe to the A2 Hosting channel on YouTube as we continue to explore the evolution and innovation of hosting and how they relate to WordPress, website optimization, and marketing.
