Just a week after starting a paid hosting division, I decided to get outsourced support to help more clients. It has been just over a week and it has been great!

I read all the transcripts everyday and their answers are very professional and polite. I am currently using their 24x7 service and I must say, it has been truely 24x7. There are a few techs who come and go, but live help is always online.

keep up the good work Tripod Support :)

whats there website?

Originally posted by outkast
I read all the transcripts everyday and their answers are very professional and polite.

There's been some question floating around as to the quality of the support staff's english. Can you tell us whether the spelling and grammar were ok?


Originally posted by gilbert
whats there website?

http://www.tripodsupport.com/

the english is good. There are minor typos, but nothing that makes the words look bad.

I enjoy being able to rely on Tripod Support as well, good on them.

i just see a price on customers i dont see anything on tickets or anything, is it priced by customers or by ticket, is there a way to go by ticket or what?

they are priced per customer. They will do livehelp, tickets and more (I just use those two services).

$35.00 per month for up to 500 customers a month, or that's what I'm charged anyway. Includes sales support, livechat, support tickets and e-mail as well as basic Server Admin.

Originally posted by DroveNet
$35.00 per month for up to 500 customers a month, or that's what I'm charged anyway. Includes sales support, livechat, support tickets and e-mail as well as basic Server Admin.

I think you mean up to 50 customers?

yeah 50 customers are $35

How would you guys rate them overall?

Any one using their phone support service?

Originally posted by outkast
I am currently using their 24x7 service and I must say, it has been truely 24x7. There are a few techs who come and go, but live help is always online.


How comes your Live support at the "Help Center Live" says offline?

Originally posted by 3en
How comes your Live support at the "Help Center Live" says offline?

sorry, the datacenter had a network issue. I'll contact them so they can come back.

Mind if I test your pre-sales support?
You just need to tell me that i'm talking to tripod support not you or your crew.

Do you have tripod use their names or 4web as chat name?

I'll post the results/transcript here.

Originally posted by 3en
Mind if I test your pre-sales support?
You just need to tell me that i'm talking to tripod support not you or your crew.

Do you have tripod use their names or 4web as chat name?

I'll post the results/transcript here.

Sure, I contacted Tripodsupport, and waiting for them to come on. I can PM you once they come online :)

Yes, they are called 4Web, there is only one login for them, so they all share the same name.

they're online now

Originally posted by skylapcom
they're online now

servermatrix is still having issues. I am still waiting for the network to come back up.

It says "Sorry, all the operators are busy at this time, please send us a trouble ticket and we will get back to you as soon as possible."

Does not look good so far.

Yes, I want to know what happens. :).

Originally posted by 3en
It says "Sorry, all the operators are busy at this time, please send us a trouble ticket and we will get back to you as soon as possible."

Does not look good so far.

is there a way to set the timer for chat request to 15-20 seconds?

Sometimes, that happens to me too.

Yes, I think theres a way.

yeah i havent yet had an actual chat response from your site yet, it just waits and then goes to the ticket system. are they even at the computers?

Yes i have also being having the issue with them too. I wanted to just test out how well they would respond to customers answers and such. So i have hired them so i can test out their services.

The livehelp interface i use is Stardevelop Livehelp and Perldesk as the helpdesk. So anyway there has been alot of problems with issues of timeouts with Stardevelop livehelp client application however i do not have these problems with my setup.

There has been problems with them not able to hear the noise when a chat is pending, they upgraded the .net frameworks and installed them. I told them today I will give them 5 hours to fix all these problems. The support tech on livehelp for tripod support said that he assured me these issues will be fixed in this time.

So i came back 6 hours later and to see if they were online which they where. I tested out the livehelp interface to see if a potential client would fall through the crack. And guess what, i was put on hold for 10 minutes before i decided to logout. This has not been going on for 1 day, this has been going on for about a week and a half now.

I have contacted every single person ranging from Roj to the support tech people to make sure that everything runs properly and they all keep assuring me that this will not happen again.

So in all fairness i will give them another 2 days to fix up the headaches before i make my decision.

The Tech support guy also asked me whether or not i could move to using ClickChatSold as my livehelp interface?

I would also like to state that the Tech support guy i have had has helped me along, but they must hate me because i bug them so many times to get different things fixed and such.

I'm curious about this outsourcing business.

Do you actually give your root passwords for the server to these people?

It seems the number of missed chat requests jumped to 22 from 7 (a few of them were mine when I was testing it at the beginning). I didn't update HCL properly, the config file was updated and the SQL was updated, but then I read their support and I needed to overwrite every file too.

I updated the script, and now try to request a chat, that seemed to be a bug in 1.2.5.

Response on HCL was very fast for me, about 15 seconds.

I've tested sites that use tripodsupport.com for support and I have yet to actually get through. I have also made a few support tickets to see their response times...i sent 3 yesterday and have not recieved one response yet.

Have they always been like this? Where are they now?

Originally posted by skylapcom
I've tested sites that use tripodsupport.com for support and I have yet to actually get through. I have also made a few support tickets to see their response times...i sent 3 yesterday and have not recieved one response yet.

Have they always been like this? Where are they now?

are you sending support tickets using our system?

I only recieved one and didn't recieve the email notification for it, but later found it. People are starting to get through and the notifications are coming now that I properly updated HCL :)

yeah, i have yet to actually get through live support with ANY hosting company i have tried that uses TripodSupport

Originally posted by skylapcom
yeah, i have yet to actually get through live support with ANY hosting company i have tried that uses TripodSupport Links? Is this pre sales or actual support as Tripod might not run their presales....

I can't post links to other people's sites since using outsourced support is usually a hidden fact people dont want out. But I have just searched around web hosting forums looking for companies using tripodsupport and I have tried both pre-sales and tech support and recieved nothing from any.

Their personal online support on tripodsupport.com is amazing it's almost always online and people always answer. Why don't they answer other chat requests and tickets as well?

I want people to see how their support is. But you can always try testing out my support. Just go to tech support and ask some cpanel questions because I mostly take care of pre-sales, but put them on other categories.

Give it a go and post the transcript if you want :)

EDIT: You can ask for their name and give feedback to TripodSupport if they've been helpful or not.

lol...before i can chat, they have to pick up my chat support. i haven't yet spoken with anyone.

lol dont mean to cause trouble but its been hours and ive tried numerous times to chat with someone. not one department works, and i have yet to recieve a response to my tickets.

hmm. what do you guys think?

I replied to the ticket in the morning, I am not sure why you didn't get a response, but its there.

"Am I able to get root access to my account? Change the root permissions for main window?"

Is that your question?
(The IP from the email traces to your server)

strange i didnt recieve it, sorry about that! i have talked with tripodsupport and they say they are in fact supporting the live support but im not sure why the live support isnt being picked up.

outkast, can you yourself on your site get a response on your own site?

I get a response, but I think it is the software. Is Stardevelop Livehelp good?

They recommended that program for me, and it seems really good. Does it provide a ticket system?

no there's no ticket system with the program, and it has a huge button that says "buy this program" when you wait for a chat which i dont like. http://www.dibellawebhosting.com uses stardevelop livehelp with tripodsupport as they mentioned earlier in this thread.

maybe perldesk and stardevelop livehelp even though they're not connected? i really like helpcenterlive because the ticketsystem AND the livehelp are connected into one.

what else have you looked into?

I didn't find anything else that I liked. I just changed some things in the config and increased the timeout for chat request, so if there is some latency, it will still connect.

Originally posted by skylapcom
i really like helpcenterlive because the ticketsystem AND the livehelp are connected into one.
[/B]

Get perldesk or esupport or what ever you use to pipe the email. So when your offline the stardev software will use email. And it will end up in ur system as a ticket.

ah brilliant! i'd like to use perldesk i think that would be great! is that what you're doing?

I am currently installing an IMAP module, so if I select IMAP from the list (currently using POP3) will it work? Do I need to enter any other info? (login/pass/server?)

Originally posted by skylapcom
ah brilliant! i'd like to use perldesk i think that would be great! is that what you're doing?

It's what we are going to do in about 3 weeks.

I use Tripod in addition to my own support team, especially on the "night" shift. I'm a very detailed person -- when they do get through, there are grammatical and typographical errors. =) Heh. On live chat, this shouldn't be the case.

I monitor my live support software constantly and see them offline sometimes. They said it had something to do with their ISP, or some power failure, etc.

I haven't had too many calls on my live support to really measure performance, but I'm not too confident in their support. For their low fee, however, it's good to use as backup. I find myself using our main guys to do support, and any calls that come in at night or during an overflow go to their operator.

Any time you outsource any service, like support, there will be a sacrifice in quality. You no longer have control over it, whereas you can effectively manage your own team if they're accountable to you. Remember, outsourced support companies such as Tripod serve multiple clients.

Think about it -- if they don't have enough "man power" to answer the tickets and live support requests, you'll see a delay in response time (which I've noticed) and a delay inbetween questions and answers on live support (which I have also noticed). I don't think you're getting one guy dedicated to that phone call. The same person could be handling ten requests all at once.

But that's just my imagination. Right now, I'm looking for a way to keep support in-house. I'm not confident about outsourcing something as critical as support, which will reflect upon how well you provide services to your customers.


JP

Yeah I've thought of that a lot, I still haven't been able to really get through on any of the sites but tripodsupport.com itself which always has someone answering within seconds.

what would you suggest instead of tripodsupport? i really like their packages especially live support included.

There are others - bobcares.com (http://www.bobcares.com). Search through the forums, you'll find a couple. The only factor is the cost. Tripod is very affordable. But you get what you pay for.


JP

Yes, do you guys know of any other outsourced support sites that are better than the ones talked about here?

i've had supportresort.com do some installs for me and they did pretty good. i havent looked over it all yet since my site is still being made though.

Ok, Please let me know what happens, and your site looks nice, :).

Okay in reply to my previous post. Everything has been fixed now. The problem was they had a very old version of the stardevelop client application. So i asked them to upgrade it to the newest version and everything is working properly.

I will be posting a review of them in the near future.

Did you guys ever get this resolved with tripodsupport? I've had a lot of problems with tickets going unanswered and chats not being answered and it doesn't seem like the problem could get fixed.

Hmm, see if you can get it fixed and then get back with us and let us know what happens.

Actually, I've been trying to get it resolved for 2 months now.....

Ohh, maybe inhouse would work, I think thats something that i'll have to do.

They give a 30 day money back guarantee thankfully so I can test things out and see how they are.

Let me know how it goes!

Here is an update.

I have departed with Tripod Support Services due to the many problems they had with Stardevelop Client Livehelp Application. It had become very frustrating to see that the support was offline. They say it was a problem with Stardevelop lagging out but i beg to differ. It was also annoying to get on their livechat facility all the time to tell them to refresh the Stardevelop client application.

Anyway i would like to say thank you to Tripod Support for their service they provided us, and the friendly chats we had online.

I would like to suggest that any webhoster that has Stardevelop Livehelp and are thinking about outsourced support with Tripod Support you might have the same problems i went through. So do test out the livehelp facility on your own site before the 30 day back guarrantee expires.

Note: Do remember all of this is based on my opinion and my side, there are always two sides to every story. Also remember that i might of had a bad experience but it might be different for you.

Ya I have been having the same problem with their service and them not paying attention to livechat or if they are logged in.

Our company has been using Support Resort (supportresort.com) since early this year and we have been very happy with them. We haven't had any of the problems described in this thread - I don't recall their techies ever being offline.

Their English is very good and they seem to have very well established systems (like their customer login area). They have helped us out with a few quite tricky Linux and cpanel issues too... they really seem to know their stuff. We've dealt with quite a number of their staff and, although there is some variation in skill-levels, the quality of their people has been consistently high and so we've been consistently satisfied.

but does supportresort.com offer live support chat for your customers or just tickets?

They are offering nice stuff...

Is it just me, or did they go offline this morning (EST), and drop their 30-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back from their web site?


JP

i do see them offline now but sometimes they have to switch operators.

"Order online today risk-free with our 30 day money back guarantee!"

My mistake. =) I've got to sleep more. Words are starting to disappear.

Anyway, maybe their ISP broke down. You know how it's like over there.


JP

Okay guys here is an update.

I have been talking with Roj who is the main man at Tripod Support. They have released to all clients and I think potential clients the opportunity to have Click Chat Sold for $10 a month less. This in turn brings Click Chat Sold down to:

$7.95/month paying yearly
$8.95/month paying for 6 months
$9.95/month paying monthly

As this can be seen this is a great deal from Tripod Supports end to counter the bad instances of the Stardevelop Livechat facility not working well. They recommend using Click Chat Sold livechat.

In the future they will be re-locating their offices and also getting a more rock-solid Internet Service Provider. So all in all i do recommend trying out their services, because they can only get better.

I have been using them for around a month with Star Developer Live help and had lots of problems, I switched to Click Chat Sold about three days ago and everything is going great so far! Click Chat Sold seems to not have any many problems and I like it a lot better.

To all who have problems with their outsourced support.... try paying more than $1/month per customer. I don't care what country the support guys are working in...that's still cheap.

If tripod support can get ClickChatSold for $10 less I would go ahead and sign up. Paying $20/mo forever just doesn't justify with me. I'm more comfortable paying up front for the script and I own it. But $10/mo is no problem if they can hook that up.

Where can I find more information about it?

outkast... i have a feeling that you don't have the operator/department polling set right in HCL. i just attempted a live Technical Support chat on your site, and sure enough... there was no answer.

i use HCL myself, and had the exact same problem. setting the polling correctly, according to who is logged on is integral to making sure that live chats are accepted.

perhaps i'm wrong... but if you'd like a hand with it, shoot me a pm. it took me awhile to figure out, but i got it down pat.

Have tried to contact Tripod (info at tripodsupport dot com) with presales question. Now, 4 days and 2 reminders later, still haven't heard from them. If their care for existing customers is the same as for the potential ones... Well, they SUCK!!! The big one!

This is solely my opinion only. But I'll never ever even consider paying to a company like this one.

Try contacting Roj on the forums or mail to another email address. There could be some problems such as mail got detected in junk (no offence :D) or other such problems and they dont even know they recieved your email.

Tripod is a good company.

Yaser

Yaser... Which forums you're speaking about? There's no such user as Roj on WHT and I haven't seen any forums at tripod site.

Good company, you say? Good companies reply to emails within 10 minutes...

Thank you.

Originally posted by nikki6
Yaser... Which forums you're speaking about? There's no such user as Roj on WHT and I haven't seen any forums at tripod site.

Good company, you say? Good companies reply to emails within 10 minutes...

Thank you.

His username is Niyogi I think. And Yaser is a Tripod Fan... He always recommends them, I don't know but some times I feel he works for them... but I can't speak without proof :blush:

Thank you Francisco! But it looks like I've lost interest in this "company" (quotes because I don't really think it IS company, it's most probably bunch of 12-year olds).

Thanks again!

Originally posted by Francisco
His username is Niyogi I think. And Yaser is a Tripod Fan... He always recommends them, I don't know but some times I feel he works for them... but I can't speak without proof :blush:

Yaser recommended Tripod to me for Phone Support.. something which they do not offer..:confused:

Originally posted by HYB-Bryan
Yaser recommended Tripod to me for Phone Support.. something which they do not offer..:confused:

Phone support... Either your clients are all based in India or buying phone support from Indian company has no sense, even if they offered such...:o

Is anyone having any luck getting in touch with them? I'd like to get a refund from them. I was told to contact their billing department for that, and haven't heard squat since, not even from Roj

Originally posted by mspottedhors
Is anyone having any luck getting in touch with them? I'd like to get a refund from them. I was told to contact their billing department for that, and haven't heard squat since, not even from Roj

As far as I understand, they offer something like private chat with their clients, try using it. Or, try initiating 'pre-sales' livechat from your homepage, if you are using it... :)

If this doesn't help, contact your bank for chargeback. :bawling:

Yeah....I'm not getting anywhere with the chat. I've tried and the person that can help me is never available. I have a meeting with my lawyer early next week regarding another matter and I will bring this up and see what my options are from a legal standpoint. I hate to do that, but I also hate walking away with the feeling of being ripped off.

Try these:

800.406.9452 (toll-free)
214.315.4478 (direct for Roj)
866.544.4131 (support center)
512.233.0867 (fax)

Do not limit yourself to toll-free ones, however. Call Roj direct and ask questions! :)