Rackspace Enhances Board of Directors

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - December 5, 2008 - Web hosting services provider, Rackspace, has appointed Bain and Company Fellow and Founder of Bain's Loyalty practice, Fred Reichheld, to its Board of Directors.




Lanham Napier, President and CEO, Rackspace Hosting commented, ''Rackspace has grown to be the leader in the IT hosting space through its focus on providing Fanatical Support to our customers. We are honored to have one of the world's most respected loyalty experts as a member of our Board of Directors. Fred will guide us on deepening our customers' loyalty to us by continually improving the service experience that Rackspace provides.''




Reichheld joined Bain in 1977 and was elected to the partnership in 1982. In January 1999, he was elected by the firm to become the first Bain Fellow. Reichheld's pioneering work has quantified the linkage between loyalty, profits, and growth. He is the author of three best selling business books including The Loyalty Effect, Loyalty Rules and The Ultimate Question and eight Harvard Business Review articles on the subject. Reichheld is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.




Last month, Rackspace awarded this year's winner of The Fanati honors, the company's outstanding customer service award, honoring the one customer that has best demonstrated excellent customer centricity.



Rackspace reviewed the applications and a short-list of seven finalists was announced. Finalists moved on to the second round of judging which involved two scoring categories. First, their application was critiqued and graded by a panel of four service industry experts including Earl Sasser, a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School; Douglas Hanna, founder and Principal of customer service consulting company Service Untitled Group ( www.serviceuntitled.com); Lane Becker, blogger for getsatisfaction.com; and David Mitzenmacher, director of customer care programs for Rackspace. Second, in order to validate the finalists' applications, a customer satisfaction survey was sent to the seven finalists' customers.



Based on the survey results and the judge's scores, Pangea Foundation proved their customer service excellence and came out on top in both categories. In comments left on the survey about Pangea Foundation, Chris Juett, 2-1-1 Program Manager for the United Way said, ''Pangea Foundation was very responsive to our needs during the recent flooding in Iowa. When we contacted them telling them we wanted a web based flood related database put together for our 2-1-1 Center, they had the site up and running in less than 24 hours. After setting up the site they have worked with us to ensure that it was meeting our needs and are now helping us with the development of reports.''



Rackspace will begin accepting customer applications for the 2009 THE FANATI in July. About Pangea Foundation A 501(c)(3) nonprofit Software-as-a-Service provider founded in 1996, Pangea Foundation is the leader in delivering Impact Visualization On Demand to nonprofits of all sizes. Backed by world-class teams of IT experts, security specialists, and technology partners, Pangea Foundation equips more than 1,200 impact-driven nonprofits across America with Web-based Software-as-a-Service that lets organizations clearly visualize and effortlessly communicate the impact of their programs.



Rackspace Hosting delivers computing-as-a-service, integrating the industry's best technologies into a flexible service offering, making computing more reliable andaffordable. A trusted partner to companies of all sizes, Rackspace enables IT departments to be more effective. Rackspace is distinguished by its award-winning Fanatical Support, furthering the company's mission to be one of the world's greatest service companies. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine's 100 Best companies to work for, ranking number 32 on the 2008 list. Rackspace's portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting (www.rackspace.com), email hosting (www.mailtrust.com) and cloud hosting ( www.mosso.com).



For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.