ealfert
03-15-2005, 11:21 AM
BACKGROUND:
I'm the owner of a small but growing hosting company called RootMode LLC (www.rootmode.com). In about 1 month we will be 2 years old. We specialize in multiple domain hosting and therefore our customers tend to be more knowledgeable than the average hosting customer. Because of this, we don't get too many simple support questions or too many questions per customer.
For the past year we have attempted to focus more on growing the business and therefore hired support techs to help answer customer questions. We tried hiring individuals as well as outsourcing to support companies. No solution met our needs by a long shot. Support companies would promise fast response times yet would not live up to those promises.
Additionally, answers would be less than complete and very often the tickets would be escalated saying that I needed to solve the issue since it wasn't a simple question. I therefore had to constantly answer tickets in order to provide the level of service we promised our customers. Don't get me wrong, I never plan on not answering tickets, but I wish to find a solution that will allow me to concentrate on growing the business instead of only answering support tickets.
Our number one concern is that our customers' questions are being answered quickly, completely, and professionally.
OUR SERVERS:
We own all our servers and colocate at the very well run Bocacom datacenter. All our servers are Dell brand and contain dual Xeon processors, 4GB ECC RAM, and mirrored 10k RPM SCSI harddrives. Additionally, all our servers contain DRAC (Dell Remote Access Card) cards that give us KVM control since the beginning of the boot process. Because we buy quality hardware, colocate in a quality datacenter, and have been lucky, we have not had any hardware failures or extended downtimes. Therefore, our systems are very stable and support questions are usually software/configuration related and are easily solved by a remote tech.
Software-wise, we have two types of servers:
* Ensim Pro with PowerTools running Fedora Core OS.
* cPanel, WebHostManager, and Fantastico running Fedore Core OS.
COMPENSATION:
I believe that part of the problem we had this past year in finding a support solution that met our needs is because we were paying per ticket. This probably leads to the behavior of techs giving incomplete answers just to get credit for the reply. Additionally, the tech support person/company does not care if the customer is satisfied or not with the answer because they are compensated per reply and not per satisfied customer. If the customer leaves because of poor support, the tech support person still gets paid the same next month. We average only 3-4 tickets per day and we guaranteed a minimum of $450 per month. Because of the low number of tickets we receive, the compensation per month was low even when we were paying more than the industry average per ticket. So, we were paying about $4.50 per support ticket and not getting them replied in a timely manner or adequately.
If we paid just a salary instead of per ticket, the situation may improve, but the tech support person is still not compensated for satisfying customer questions.
We strongly believe that a better compensation method is to pay per customer we have and also guarantee a minimum base salary. It does not matter if a customer asks a question or not, the support person would get paid extra for each customer we have. This base salary plus per customer bonus would give the support person the incentive to want to please customers so that they remain customers of ours. As the company grows, this person would be paid more every time a new customer signs up. So there is a very strong incentive to answer both pre-sales and post-sales questions quickly and fully.
We are also willing to establish a minimum guaranteed income per month that is higher than we have paid before. We want to make sure the person we hire is fairly compensated for the job they are doing. I would love to hire someone in the US, but we realize that hiring someone in the US, or other similarly rich country, will probably not be in our budget. I have researched average pay for techs in different countries and see prices ranging from $6,000 to $75,000 per year.
* http://www.finfacts.com/Private/isl/worlditpay.htm
* http://www.payscale.com/countries.asp?aid=6837&raname=SALARY
* http://www.nationmaster.com/
A person living in a country were the cost of living is much lower than the U.S. will consequently be happier with the pay we can afford and therefore probably provide a greater level of support in order to keep being contracted with us. Someone who feels the amount we contribute to their income is low will probably just stay around until something better comes along or not care as much about doing a good job for the pay involved.
In addition to lower costs, finding someone in another part of the world will allow for better coverage during U.S. non-working hours.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
* More than just a tech support person. Someone that feels they are helping to build a company, getting compensated well for it, and like to see their income constantly increasing instead of simply the normal once-per-year raise.
* Someone that takes pride in their work.
* Knowledge of Ensim and cPanel control panels (Easy to learn if you are not familiar with it and we are willing to train the right person).
* Knowledge of Linux in order to troubleshoot problems like DNS, locked files, permission problems, services not responding, etc. (This function is much harder to teach. So, we require someone with atleast a strong foundation and are willing to teach the right person if they are missing some knowledge.)
* Willing to learn and not feeling bad if someone else jumps into a support ticket to clarify or correct responses you have given a customer.
* All our customers communicate with us in English. Good spelling and grammatical skills are required.
WORK SCHEDULE:
We don't have enough support tickets to keep you occupied full-time at a set schedule. Therefore, you would be free to do other things when there are no support tickets to answer. Do support for another web host, work on your own company, website, or other job that allows you flexibility.
We just ask that when a support ticket does come in, you are available to answer quickly and dedicated the necessary time to solve the issue.
In exchange for this flexibility of being able to make money working for someone else at the same time, we ask that you are available pretty much 24/7/365. This does not mean you have to be online 24/7/365. It just means that you are able to get online 24/7/365 within a short period of time. We can configure our ticket system to send an email to your cellphone, pager, or other device that will notify you that a support ticket has been created.
APPLYING FOR THE POSITION:
How much do you want in order to treat this position as if they were the owner ("quasi-owner") of the company? You will be paid as if you were the owner because your income will go up every time a new customer signs up. But you will be paid better than the owner because you don't have to worry about profit and loss statement and your pay is guaranteed.
Who has an entrepreneurial spirit and find this position a dream job?
If you are interested, we would like to know the following:
* Where are you located so that we can make sure we comply with any employment laws?
* Hours of availability when you are normally online? (include time zone)
* Do you have a cellphone/pager that can notify you of problems when you are not online and can get to a computer fairly quickly?
* A copy of your resume.
* Pay requirement. What do you want in return for caring?
* Any other information you feel we should be aware of.
We can be contacted by:
* posting on this thread
* private message via webhostingtalk
* email: management at rootmode.com <- convert to proper format
* fax: (866) Msg-Root / (954) 385-9274
* phone: (866) Ask-Root / (954) 937-7668
Thank you for considering our offer and look forward to establishing a long term mutually beneficial relationship for us, you, and our customers.
I'm the owner of a small but growing hosting company called RootMode LLC (www.rootmode.com). In about 1 month we will be 2 years old. We specialize in multiple domain hosting and therefore our customers tend to be more knowledgeable than the average hosting customer. Because of this, we don't get too many simple support questions or too many questions per customer.
For the past year we have attempted to focus more on growing the business and therefore hired support techs to help answer customer questions. We tried hiring individuals as well as outsourcing to support companies. No solution met our needs by a long shot. Support companies would promise fast response times yet would not live up to those promises.
Additionally, answers would be less than complete and very often the tickets would be escalated saying that I needed to solve the issue since it wasn't a simple question. I therefore had to constantly answer tickets in order to provide the level of service we promised our customers. Don't get me wrong, I never plan on not answering tickets, but I wish to find a solution that will allow me to concentrate on growing the business instead of only answering support tickets.
Our number one concern is that our customers' questions are being answered quickly, completely, and professionally.
OUR SERVERS:
We own all our servers and colocate at the very well run Bocacom datacenter. All our servers are Dell brand and contain dual Xeon processors, 4GB ECC RAM, and mirrored 10k RPM SCSI harddrives. Additionally, all our servers contain DRAC (Dell Remote Access Card) cards that give us KVM control since the beginning of the boot process. Because we buy quality hardware, colocate in a quality datacenter, and have been lucky, we have not had any hardware failures or extended downtimes. Therefore, our systems are very stable and support questions are usually software/configuration related and are easily solved by a remote tech.
Software-wise, we have two types of servers:
* Ensim Pro with PowerTools running Fedora Core OS.
* cPanel, WebHostManager, and Fantastico running Fedore Core OS.
COMPENSATION:
I believe that part of the problem we had this past year in finding a support solution that met our needs is because we were paying per ticket. This probably leads to the behavior of techs giving incomplete answers just to get credit for the reply. Additionally, the tech support person/company does not care if the customer is satisfied or not with the answer because they are compensated per reply and not per satisfied customer. If the customer leaves because of poor support, the tech support person still gets paid the same next month. We average only 3-4 tickets per day and we guaranteed a minimum of $450 per month. Because of the low number of tickets we receive, the compensation per month was low even when we were paying more than the industry average per ticket. So, we were paying about $4.50 per support ticket and not getting them replied in a timely manner or adequately.
If we paid just a salary instead of per ticket, the situation may improve, but the tech support person is still not compensated for satisfying customer questions.
We strongly believe that a better compensation method is to pay per customer we have and also guarantee a minimum base salary. It does not matter if a customer asks a question or not, the support person would get paid extra for each customer we have. This base salary plus per customer bonus would give the support person the incentive to want to please customers so that they remain customers of ours. As the company grows, this person would be paid more every time a new customer signs up. So there is a very strong incentive to answer both pre-sales and post-sales questions quickly and fully.
We are also willing to establish a minimum guaranteed income per month that is higher than we have paid before. We want to make sure the person we hire is fairly compensated for the job they are doing. I would love to hire someone in the US, but we realize that hiring someone in the US, or other similarly rich country, will probably not be in our budget. I have researched average pay for techs in different countries and see prices ranging from $6,000 to $75,000 per year.
* http://www.finfacts.com/Private/isl/worlditpay.htm
* http://www.payscale.com/countries.asp?aid=6837&raname=SALARY
* http://www.nationmaster.com/
A person living in a country were the cost of living is much lower than the U.S. will consequently be happier with the pay we can afford and therefore probably provide a greater level of support in order to keep being contracted with us. Someone who feels the amount we contribute to their income is low will probably just stay around until something better comes along or not care as much about doing a good job for the pay involved.
In addition to lower costs, finding someone in another part of the world will allow for better coverage during U.S. non-working hours.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
* More than just a tech support person. Someone that feels they are helping to build a company, getting compensated well for it, and like to see their income constantly increasing instead of simply the normal once-per-year raise.
* Someone that takes pride in their work.
* Knowledge of Ensim and cPanel control panels (Easy to learn if you are not familiar with it and we are willing to train the right person).
* Knowledge of Linux in order to troubleshoot problems like DNS, locked files, permission problems, services not responding, etc. (This function is much harder to teach. So, we require someone with atleast a strong foundation and are willing to teach the right person if they are missing some knowledge.)
* Willing to learn and not feeling bad if someone else jumps into a support ticket to clarify or correct responses you have given a customer.
* All our customers communicate with us in English. Good spelling and grammatical skills are required.
WORK SCHEDULE:
We don't have enough support tickets to keep you occupied full-time at a set schedule. Therefore, you would be free to do other things when there are no support tickets to answer. Do support for another web host, work on your own company, website, or other job that allows you flexibility.
We just ask that when a support ticket does come in, you are available to answer quickly and dedicated the necessary time to solve the issue.
In exchange for this flexibility of being able to make money working for someone else at the same time, we ask that you are available pretty much 24/7/365. This does not mean you have to be online 24/7/365. It just means that you are able to get online 24/7/365 within a short period of time. We can configure our ticket system to send an email to your cellphone, pager, or other device that will notify you that a support ticket has been created.
APPLYING FOR THE POSITION:
How much do you want in order to treat this position as if they were the owner ("quasi-owner") of the company? You will be paid as if you were the owner because your income will go up every time a new customer signs up. But you will be paid better than the owner because you don't have to worry about profit and loss statement and your pay is guaranteed.
Who has an entrepreneurial spirit and find this position a dream job?
If you are interested, we would like to know the following:
* Where are you located so that we can make sure we comply with any employment laws?
* Hours of availability when you are normally online? (include time zone)
* Do you have a cellphone/pager that can notify you of problems when you are not online and can get to a computer fairly quickly?
* A copy of your resume.
* Pay requirement. What do you want in return for caring?
* Any other information you feel we should be aware of.
We can be contacted by:
* posting on this thread
* private message via webhostingtalk
* email: management at rootmode.com <- convert to proper format
* fax: (866) Msg-Root / (954) 385-9274
* phone: (866) Ask-Root / (954) 937-7668
Thank you for considering our offer and look forward to establishing a long term mutually beneficial relationship for us, you, and our customers.