Media Temple’s Customer-Centric Focus Shines Through on Evolution of AWS-Powered, Enterprise-Grade WordPress Hosting

Written by: Sean Garrity

Sean Garrity

Sean has more than 15 years of experience researching, writing, and editing for numerous industry-specific trade publications. His goal is to keep organizations and stakeholders informed of the latest trends and technologies that can help them streamline operations and thrive online. Sean loves to chat about all things IT infrastructure and covers a range of topics in his writing, including virtualization, cloud computing, the hyperscalers, IoT and edge technologies, and digital transformation, among others.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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TL; DR: We’re long-time fans of Media Temple at HostingAdvice, and with several MT customers on our team, we can vouch for their top-notch reliability and award-winning customer service. The team has consistently proven people are their priority with their dedicated account management program, mt (One); their well-known managed VPS service, DV; and of course, the Grid — and they’ve done it again. Get the latest MT update: a managed Enterprise WordPress solution powered by the AWS Cloud that provides the level of scalability, reliability, and security that large companies need to ensure their sites remain running smoothly while they handle day-to-day business.

Developers are no strangers to the revision process. Picture it: Inspiration hits you in the form of a new project idea or update, you start structuring it out, and before you know it, you’re elbow-deep in what may be the most well-organized, beautiful code you’ve ever written. It’s a project you’re proud of, one that will help people, or make you money, or all of the above. You’re pumped to submit that pull request.

Then it’s time for the code review — and you realize that your game-changing idea has some hiccups. It’s not built to serve the masses quite like you envisioned, and that’s a setback that can be hard to swallow as a dev when s/he’s super passionate about an idea.

Even technology powerhouses like Media Temple — the company behind the market-leading Grid shared hosting and extremely popular managed DV solution — have been there. But to them, setbacks just solidify their foundation for bringing feedback-driven products to customers.

For example, after introducing new managed WordPress hosting plans in 2015, Media Temple received feedback from enterprise-level customers and agencies. The consensus: These types of companies’ needs differed from those of medium-sized agencies, web developers, and designers.

Senior Director of Communications Pascale Marchand told us about how Media Temple’s Enterprise WordPress was born.

“In that first year, many of our enterprise customers expressed interest in features more closely tailored to their specific needs when it comes to support, scale, security, and speed,” said Pascale Marchand, Senior Director of Communications for Media Temple. “Because we are connected to our customers and listen to them constantly, we launched Enterprise WordPress, which uniquely combines managed WordPress with high-end 24/7 support, dedicated account management, and cloud technology.”

Latest WordPress Solution Touts AWS Scalability and (mt) One Service

Enterprise WordPress, Media Temple’s new offering for enterprise-grade businesses, leverages the scalability of the AWS Cloud with (mt) One — Media Temple’s dedicated account management — and 24/7 support.

“Enterprise WordPress has been very well-received,” Pascale said. “When we launched in May, the Twittersphere was really buzzing about it.”

Here’s a look at some of the great features of Enterprise WordPress:

The process of upgrading to Enterprise WordPress includes a very hands-on and customized approach by the (mt) One team, which, among other services, ensures that websites and apps are operating at peak performance.

Photo of Media Temple Tech Support

Enterprise WordPress includes (mt) One, a white-glove account management service provided by dedicated personnel.

“We make sure that we go through every potential need enterprises might have, and sometimes even things they hadn’t thought about themselves,” Pascale said. “So when we’re done with the sales cycle, they have a perfectly customized solution. We make sure we do comprehensive prep before we launch, so it takes a little more time to set up and execute.”

The concierge services of (mt) One provide customers and partners with a dedicated account manager, who knows their businesses inside and out, proactively and reactively handling every issue quickly, and even scheduling regular business reviews to discuss upcoming digital needs and potential high-traffic events.

“Basically, customers get a dedicated hotline that puts them in the front of every line,” Pascale said. “They don’t have to wait, and they get white-glove account management 24/7, which is basically customer support on steroids.”

Award-Winning Customer Service is Media Temple’s Central Focus

More than half of Media Temple’s 230 employees work in customer service, which is hardly surprising with the company’s mission focusing on bringing their customers peace of mind by providing premium-level support and solutions.

If you were to visit Media Temple’s offices in Los Angeles, you would find their support team sitting in the very center of the building — and that’s no coincidence as the company puts customer support at the center of everything they do.

“We’re not just trying to make a record number of sales,” Pascale said. “It’s about being more than just a technology provider. We want to become an extension of our customers’ businesses, and we are making sure that we are nurturing those relationships by having their backs 24/7.”

Media Temple’s relentless focus on their customers has paid off with some serious hardware. The Stevie Awards, which are the world’s top customer service awards, has regularly honored Media Temple’s customer support team — most recently recognizing them with two prestigious awards in March of 2016.

Media Temple’s customer support team added two Stevie Awards to their collection this year.

Media Temple won a Gold Stevie Award as the Office Customer Service Team of the Year in the Technology Industries category. They also earned a Silver Stevie Award in the Best Use of Technology in Customer Service in the Computer Services and Computer Software category.

In fact, Media Temple has taken home 10 Stevie Awards in the past four years, proving their steadfast commitment to putting customers first.

A key part of listening to customers is creating avenues to receive the sort of feedback you need to stay in touch with their needs. Media Temple was the first hosting company to use Twitter as a customer support channel, a great example of the cross-platform customer service they provide.

One way of keeping customers happy is proactively snuffing out potential issues before they become a problem, and that’s what led to Media Temple implementing a Bug Bounty Program. As great as their engineers are at using the latest technology to provide premium hosting solutions, sometimes they don’t catch every bug in the system the first time around.

The Bug Bounty Program began organically when a technologically inclined user contacted Media Temple through Twitter to report a bug.

“We looked into it, and we said, ‘Wow, that’s actually very helpful,’” Pascale said. “We get those messages sometimes from customers who are tech-savvy, and it helps us get bugs fixed in a timely manner.”

Media Temple decided to start their own version of the program since it was helping to improve the overall user experience and performance of their solutions.

People-Centric Also Applies to Thriving Office Culture at Media Temple

Getting a job at Media Temple involves a long interview process, but by all accounts, it seems well worth the effort. While going through multiple interviews herself, Pascale was impressed with the intelligence level — both intellectually and emotionally — of her future co-workers.

After more than three years with the company, Pascale can speak to Media Temple’s work-hard, play-hard philosophy.

“The play hard part comes after the work hard part, but it is probably equally important because we know that happy employees help a company be more productive,” Pascale said.

Media Temple has kept their employees thriving with perks like fully stocked kitchens, pool tables, monthly happy hours, and other events. Recently, the Media Temple team went to Dodger Stadium for a baseball game.

The company also hosts table tennis tournaments that double as costume parties — where creatives, partners, clients, and employees gather and compete against each other. While their first event was in Los Angeles, they recently expanded the event’s reach by hosting an event in Chicago, and it came complete with a Barack Obama impersonator.

Media Temple’s first table tennis tournament in Chicago featured a Barack Obama impersonator and a lot of fun.

Media Temple’s Senior Manager of Affiliate Marketing Tammy Porter added: “I think the passion of our people speaks through so much in everything that we’re doing and is definitely one of core values. Our human resources department being called the Employee Experience department and really emphasizing our work-life balance is really critical.”

Constant Evolution Recalls Media Temple’s Beginnings

Rolling with the punches of code revisions tends to produce a stronger end result, just as customer feedback has led Media Temple to innovative ideas that continue to offer increased reliability to their users.

This constant evolution goes back to Media Temple’s origins. Media Temple Founder Demian Sellfors was working in the creative industry and needed a web host who would speak his language and enable him to focus on his work and not spend time worrying about his server.

Designers and developers have technical needs, but more importantly, they require the peace of mind to really be able to dig into their projects without stressing over IT needs. Demian found that no such hosting company existed, so he started Media Temple in 1998.

“We were created out of necessity, and we kept growing around needs that we felt were not met in the industry,” Pascale said. “Bringing peace of mind to our customers has been our mission since day one, and we’ve kept operating around that.”

As Media Temple celebrates their 18th anniversary in September of 2016, they plan to keep evolving their offering to meet their customers’ needs. Meanwhile, we at HostingAdvice can’t wait to see what this team does next.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean has more than 15 years of experience researching, writing, and editing for numerous industry-specific trade publications. His goal is to keep organizations and stakeholders informed of the latest trends and technologies that can help them streamline operations and thrive online. Sean loves to chat about all things IT infrastructure and covers a range of topics in his writing, including virtualization, cloud computing, the hyperscalers, IoT and edge technologies, and digital transformation, among others.

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