Hi,

I currently run my small hosting company more-or-less on my own. I have a few people who help me out in exchange for hosting but the jest is run, and run hard by me.

I am thinking what ways can you recommend to make things more efficient. Here is the basics of my business practice.


Client signs up
I receive the details and manually enter these into WHM to add the new account
I then have a text doc which has the welcoming letter. I copy this to Outlook in a new email and then make all the changes (this can somtimes be timely customising all details for a client
Email is sent and customer can begin using it


Now, I am looking at ways to make this more efficient- is there any way really?

Now, How about support? What is the 'in' thing these days?

I have a support forum, and like to handle support via email or Humanclick. Do people like these ticket systems? Personally I can't stand them as a user since you usually need to signup and I find that cumbersome.

I have a FAQ section in the forum which I think serves it's purpose and I add to every few days to build it up.

How about storing customer details? I generally store the usernames etc in a passworded Access database which I knocked up in 5 or so minutes so it's not that great really. Are there any free solutions to this perhaps? I find mine doesn't work all that well.

Any more recommendations?

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow

I have a support forum, and like to handle support via email or Humanclick. Do people like these ticket systems? Personally I can't stand them as a user since you usually need to signup and I find that cumbersome.

You could go in and add your customer's accounts to a ticket system when you set up their account. I do this with PerlDesk, using the username and password they entered on the sign up form. Then they won't have to sign up themselves. Or, I think PerlDesk has an option to disable the signup part, so nobody has to do any signing up. You could try that.

And yes, I like PerlDesk. Keeps things nice and organized.

That does interest me since it is nice to keep it all organised. I had problems setting her up before though :(

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow
That does interest me since it is nice to keep it all organised. I had problems setting her up before though :(

Try the PerlDesk forums. They look helpful. :)

To save some time you could create some sort of script that lets you enter the customer's name and details, and then it generates and sends off the welcome document automatically for you.

Yeah that seems like a good idea, I may check out the old mail-merge in Word and see If I could play about.

You may want to look into Ubersmith (advertised all over this site) by Voxel Dot Net.

You can write a welcome email with the "mail merge" functionality that has been discussed here, and IMO it's one of the better ways to keep track of your clients.

There is a simple ticketing system included in Ubersmith called Ticketsmith (it's also an OS project) -- it should be enough to get you going with a fairly up to date support system.

There is no public login, it's all e-mail driven.

Try www.phpmanager.net

It's cheap, and does many of the things you want, including creating the accounts with the click of the button instead of entering all data, sending automatic emails, and billing management also.

Originally posted by The Laughing Cow

I then have a text doc which has the welcoming letter. I copy this to Outlook in a new email and then make all the changes (this can somtimes be timely customising all details for a client
Email is sent and customer can begin using it


I have a support forum ...
How about storing customer details?


We have been using ubersmith for a couple months now, it will actually store the client info and let you send the 'welcome letter' with some custom info, IP number of site, user name, and password. This is nice since we used to do the cut/copy/replace task as you described. When you sign up for ubersmith you also get access to ticketsmith. We were using RT before and it was nice (just a bit tough to set up). Going from RT to ticketsmith was a very bad thing. We had a major loss in functionality, etc., now we are using another system.

I think the FAQ section and the forum are a very good idea. I think the best way to reduce costs is to reduce support needs. If you can train your customers to help themselves and make it as easy as possible you have won. ;)

Yes, Ubersmith looks good but I couldn't justify it quite yet due to the expense.

I generally have very good customers and most of them don't even email support ever which is nice. I was thinking in the future generally.

Since this I have created a simple mail-merge in Microsoft Word. This creates two files, one with the welcome letter and the other is a spreadsheet/table with all the customer details in it. This works quite well for checking customer details too etc.

I installed PerlDesk the other day but then ran into problems with it and now it won't work. I may look into another Ticketing system.

Thanks for the advice :)

ModernBill.com looks nice, does all the billing for you. Does it have automatic account signup and integration with control panels at all?

Also take a look at hostgui.com when that comes out...it wraps billing and the control panel into one.

Brian

I think you should look into phpmanager.com. For 20 bucks, it really offers a lot, and allows you to fully manage your customers -- it even includes a built in helpdesk. :)