DomainDiscover offers three levels of partnerships, with a focus on quality customer service.

by Jeff Goldman [November 27, 2007]

DomainDiscover is the domain registration site of the California-based webhosting company TierraNet, which was founded back in 1996. TierraNet became accredited as a registrar in 1999, and launched the DomainDiscover offering in January of 2000.

The company offers three levels of partnerships: referral, reseller and affiliate. The referral program is the simplest of the three—referral partners simply have their customers enter a referral code when they place an order with TierraNet, and the partner then receives a $50 service credit for each new account.

Resellers receive a customized web page and branded control panel through which they can resell TierraNet's services—except for domain names—on a fully private labeled basis. There's a $50 setup fee to start, and the reseller handles all billing and support for their customers.

Affiliates can resell all of the company's services, including domain names—and have everything handled on their behalf by TierraNet, including billing and customer support. All aspects of the offering are fully branded to the affiliate, including phone support and all web pages. Like the reseller program, the affiliate program requires a $50 setup fee.

Selecting your services
Company customer service manager Jeremy Watkin says the fact that both affiliates and resellers get all aspects of the offering fully branded is a key selling point. "We brand everything to the reseller or affiliate," he says. "Things we can't brand, like our mail servers and whatnot, we have generic domains for them so that people won't see TierraNet."

Watkin says TierraNet focuses on the affiliate program, thanks to the fact that it covers all aspects of the company's offering including domain registration—and while most partners come to the company to resell webhosting as well as domain registration, Watkin says that's not always the case. "Domains are such an easy thing to add on, and take zero maintenance on the part of the affiliate, that it's a nice program to have," he says.

The branding, Watkin says, is extremely straightforward. Starting with a set of pages that look a lot like the TierraNet and DomainDiscover websites, the partner can easily change the logo and the color scheme, and can select which products and services they want to offer to their customers. For larger affiliates, Watkin says a custom API can be made available to handle high volume.

And the fact that the partner can select which services will be made available to their customers is key, the point being that a webhost can turn to DomainDiscover for domain registration without having to worry that TierraNet will compete with them for webhosting customers. There's even simple code available, Watkin says, for a partner to place a domain search box on their own site and keep full control of the customer experience.

Quality customer service
While TierraNet may not have the cheapest prices out there, Watkin says, the company works to make sure that all pricing is as straightforward as possible. "Some registrars will lower their prices, but then they'll charge an ICANN fee in addition at checkout," he says. "With our prices, the registration fee covers everything. There are no other fees that will be tagged on."

The quality of the company's customer service, Watkin says, is a point of pride. "We have someone staffed on the phones 24/7, and we offer phone, e-mail and chat support," he says. "Our e-mail response time overall is a couple of hours, but 99 percent of e-mails get responded to within the hour. Chat wait time is never more than a minute, and phone hold time is 30 to 40 seconds."

And the customer is always right. "Our motto is to offer the customer the best experience possible," Watkin says. "If there's a misunderstanding or anything of that nature, we definitely side with the customer rather than taking our own side. We err on the side of making sure the customer's happy—and hopefully they'll refer more people to us!"

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