Following the recent deliberations regarding a bloggers code of conduct I thought it might be time to initiate some discussion on a web hosts code of conduct. A code of conduct that places particular emphasis on customer service.

Accordingly, I have donned my purple shroud, and black triple j cap, and decree the following:

1. A good web host should be customer service orientated. That means when you call their support line looking for assistance, and the person who takes the call cannot help you, they should find someone who can.

Not everyone is a web hosting expert, but there must someone at a web hosting company who knows something about web hosting. Right?

2. Emails should be responded to, or at least acknowledged, in a timely manner, and not weeks later, if at all. The auto responder merely confirming receipt of the query does NOT count.

If an answer cannot be supplied within the space of one business day, it would be appropriate to inform the customer that a solution will instead be forthcoming within X amount of time.

3. A good web host should have a call centre whose staff are not baffled by terms such as Wordpress, Whois, blogs, blogosphere, et el.

4. If for whatever reason a web host is going to take a customer’s website offline, perhaps because they can’t handle a sudden surge in traffic, it would be appreciated, and indeed appropriate, if they could somehow communicate the issue with their customer.

This in preference to the customer having to take the initiative. Every time. The attitude “out of sight out of mind” just doesn’t cut it in a world choke full of $8 a month web hosting deals.

5. Better still a good web host should be proactive.

“We notice you’ve had a surge in traffic. As hosting experts let us suggest a number of strategies to deal with this, so that everyone benefits. After all we are 100% au fait with 307 redirects, cached pages, and all this other new fangled technology stuff.”

Proactive? That must kind of be the opposite of reactive, right?