Offshore and risk losing customers, says web hosting company Webfusion

February 24, 2009; 01:14 AM

Web hosting and domain expert, Webfusion, warns that offshoring to save money in the short term will lose customers in the long term. Companies must weather the storm and continue to invest in the UK, despite the current economic climate. Following the recent £2.5m investment into a new data centre in Leeds, Webfusion is already reaping the rewards of keeping hosting and customer service operations at home.

Thomas Vollrath, Managing Director at Webfusion, explains, “We’ve had more businesses than ever call in to simply ask if our hosting and support is based in the UK. Customer demand is still high in our online industry despite the downturn and businesses seem keen to help keep money in the UK economy. Expanding UK operations and securing British jobs hold great appeal to existing and potential customers; that’s why we host our operations in the UK.”

Webfusion has recently opened a brand new £2.5m data centre in Leeds with 24/7/365 support staff and invested in the technology infrastructure to create stability across the entire Webfusion platform. Headquartered in Uxbridge, Webfusion continues to recruit across the board from technical and new media to customer service staff and already its UK-central teamwork has paid off: Vollrath continues, “Investing in premium quality UK-based support has improved our call centre management immensely and our customers recognise this. Since bringing support back into the UK, our service level has gone up from 29 per cent in April 2007 to 92 per cent in December 2008. Overall call volumes have also reduced by 42 per cent year on year.

“We are now commended by our customers on how much the service has improved and web hosting industry body, Netcraft, has reported us to be one of the most reliable webhosts in the world, which makes us very proud.”

A long-standing link with Brunel University, local to the headquarters, enables Webfusion to benefit from UK graduate and undergraduate students looking for placements or part time work. Flexible work experience placements coupled with comprehensive training means that many Brunel graduates receive a full working contract with Webfusion on completion of their studies.

About Webfusion

Webfusion Group Ltd is the largest web hosting organisation in the UK with 1.4 million hosted websites and almost 2 million registered domains. Webfusion offers cost-effective, feature-rich hosting packages for a diverse customer-base - from web developers, designers and hobbyists to businesses with complex e-commerce operations. Webfusion’s customers benefit from market-leading security and service, including 24x7 technical support and state-of-the-art data centres.

In December 2008, Webfusion won the UK Web Hosting Directory ‘Best for Microsoft Hosting’ and Hostest.net’s ‘Highly Rated for Support’ achieving a near-perfect score of 4.66 out of 5.0.

For more information, please visit www.webfusion.co.uk

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