Ok, a LOT of variables here and every host will have different needs, but generally what is your # of clients to # of staff ratio? Say per 100 clients, 500, 1000, etc?

I'm sure many of you have this figured out. Or, maybe more in terms of weekly staff hours to XXX # of clients...

110,000:18

:)

One person works hard enough to support over 6000 clients?

For the larger portion of our client base, we handle all technical support; For a smaller portion we are a supplement to an existing staff.

Either that or our guys are just REALLY fast :D

If you have an overall smooth operation, the amount of staff needed is quite low. However, that does depend on what sort of services you are providing. Eg. shared, reseller, VPS, dedicated, or colocation.

Depends if you are talking tech support staff or
customer service or billing or what ever (insert
random department here.)

As an overall rule of thumb, 1:2000 is generally
normal.

D

yeah, a lot of variables, I know. Just hoping to get a cross section of some of the numbers out there from various hosts, whatever their particular situation might be.

The more the tickets the more the staff.

E.g

2000 clients = 20 tickets a day = Not very much staff needed.

300 clients = 900 tickets a day = more staff needed.

i like the 2000 clients with 20 tickets type :D

but 3000 clients with 900 tickets ? :eek: what a NEWBIE customers

Do you generally need more support for resellers or shared clients?

shared requires more support than resellers/dedicated in most of the time, since they know what are they doing and they are supporting their own clients

As JTY mentioned, it all depends on how smooth your operation is. With the help of flash tutorials, FAQ sections, and so many other things, the support load can be significantly reduced.

Plus, if the staff is knowledgeable and polite, they can generally resolve the issues faster and more efficiently.

Also, the ratio doesn't increase proportionally. While 2 people can probably manage 3,000 clients, 20 people can easily do 50,000+ and more.

Boris

If you have limited hardware and network problems you really don't need much staff. We operate perfectly fine with a fairly small staff simply because we don't get that many support requests. Just gain customers and then hire staff as needed, that will do better for you than any formula.

An important factor to consider is how proactive you choose to be with your support. If you're simply putting out fires then you would need fewer people. It takes more people on staff if you are actually looking for the smoke before the fire starts.

Another factor to consider is how detailed and comprehensive your tutorials are. Tutorials can save you many hours of tech support time.

We have five full time staff members...and we seem to have alot of time on our hands to goof around. :D

Seriously, we work hard...but we have enough people so that none of us really ever get overwhelmed.

--Tina

honestly i think a good customer:staff ratio would be depending on the customer demads and the support service level that you have set. Considering these factors every company will differ from the next.

Thanks
- James

and we seem to have alot of time on our hands to goof around Mini-Nerf basketball tournaments? :D

Thanks folks. Couple good insights there :)

Listen to your customers. They will tell you if you are meeting their needs.

Of course it depends on how hard your staff works.

Originally posted by TS-Dave
For the larger portion of our client base, we handle all technical support; For a smaller portion we are a supplement to an existing staff.

Either that or our guys are just REALLY fast :D

We would be in that latter group, but your guys are *really* fast :D (which one of your team members was the one that could do 40 tickets an hour? ;) )

In all seriousness, a good FAQ and tutorial section can be as good as several employees. Add in a customer forum, and you can seriously cut down on the number of requests coming from your customers. I look through each day's tickets and see what topics come up most often. If there's something unanswered by our FAQ, I work on adding a new entry. Some things obviously have to be answered by support (can I get SSH access? I need a backup restored! etc), but you can really cut through the time-consuming questions if you have a good explination already in place. That alone could double your ratio right there :)

We generally keep high staff to customer ratio to provide the best support we can possibly. We have it about 1 staff member per 300 clients. Not that it's aboslutely needed, but our goal is to answer and resolve tickets withing minutes of posting.


Seems to work out pretty well. :)

In all seriousness, in the last 6 months our firm has been quite succesful at keeping a 1:5 ratio, or five clients for every one staffperson.

Originally posted by rossko
In all seriousness, in the last 6 months our firm has been quite succesful at keeping a 1:5 ratio, or five clients for every one staffperson.

Damn, what do you charge your customers? $750 per month? :|

You get what you pay for.

Originally posted by timdorr
Damn, what do you charge your customers? $750 per month? :|

1 guy...with five customers. :D

--Tina

Another thing you might want to keep in mind is the type of accounts your selling.

Most of our accounts (70%) are 49.95/mo accounts which dictates a more aggressive client:staff ratio, the ratio we use is 1:100 of course that 1 person knows the names of most of the clients they deal with, and gives them a very personal support experiance.

now if your selling budget accounts things get tricky because they "generally" require more support because they are do it yourselfers. However at budget rates most people will roll with some support delays.

All in all it's about the type of hosting company you want to be, I decided that My hosting company would deal with mainly high end clients and that's the market I went after.