What are the skills/technical abilities required

1) Technical staff
2) Sales Staff
3) Customer Support
4) System Adminstrators

How does outsource companies maintain their staff and on what basis do they recruit the employees. I can see many indian companies offering support solutions. and I would appreciate comments from them, rootsupport,bobcares,etechsupport are all here and it's not basically being biased to Indians, it goes worldwide

Seriously, a lot of hosts wonder whether they would like to hire dedicated techs or the company where they are outsourcing would be able to deliver their costs on outsourcing.
So, what does a staff needs to have in him/her to be able to give end results

Originally posted by cunning
. . . So, what does a staff needs to have in him/her to be able to give end results
They need to be competant, and know what they're doing. Seems pretty obvious, as I'm sure a lot of them have university/college training/certification etc. These companies look to have skilled staff, so as to provide their customers with great service. If their staff is unskilled and incompetant, then they'll lose business.

Absolutely, and what are the criterias they set in recruiting their staff from the local community

Say for technical staff, they can hire RHCE certified professionals who are looking to work on linux servers but do they understand the pressure of handling servers and do they chat with clients

FOr a sales person, an MBA or a gradution degree would be enough

What about the server admins, do they just handle the servers or give live support, who handles the tickets,can the technical staff take care of the customer support, who handles the billing section

How does the the outsourced company structure their management staff

Originally posted by cunning
Absolutely, and what are the criterias they set in recruiting their staff from the local community
That's something that you'd have to ask each specific company. Each would source the best staff they can afford, and how they achieve that would differ from company to company.

Take TouchSupport for example (http://touchsupport.com/outsourced-tech-support-staff.php) -
Our people are the heart of our operation. By carefully selecting the best and brightest young minds, we are able to offer the highest quality support services available today. All of our employees hold bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, or will in the near future. We firmly believe the wisest investment any company can make is in its people.

Yes Bob, that is the reason I posted here so that Support companies can share their views on it and also other hosting providers who have their in house team can share about what skills are they looking from the technical staff they would be hiring. So this thing is open to everyone. rather people who are providing best support can also post comments about how they handle their team and stuff

huh, where are the support companies, huh,
What are the views of the hosting companies

Originally posted by cunning
huh, where are the support companies
This aint a drive through, you know. :D

They're propbably busy building their businesses, and not always have time to drop by WHT and respond to posts like yours.
What are the views of the hosting companies
I don't use outsourced support, but if I did, I would expect a certian level of skill and intelligence from the techs/sysadmins. I would expect that they have the sufficient skills to successfully and efficiently perform their tasks. I would expect them to be honest, and hard working. No bludging on the job!

The outsourced support model is by far the most cost effective. If it was as good as in-house support, lots of companies with in-house support would probably also have out-sourced support.

hmm, as usual Bobs comments out here.

Exactly, what skills are you talking about, and who performs what tasks, how does the management level structures

Does technical staff answers the support tickets. who handles the billing part, can server admins talk live if there is a live chat system,

If there is a live chat on my hosting site and on one side a current client comes and asks about his queries, and on the other side a prospect comes and ask presales questions, how is it handled.

For system administrators, I could recommend to you PlatinumServerManagement (known before as FastServerManagement). There pricing is $29/mo with unlimited admin work, which I think is a good value, and from my experience, has proven better than another server admin company we paid $75/mo per server for.

Thanks, Netway, I am not looking to buy services here but looking to share views and know something from the performers and to help the beginners.
Thanks for letting others know about FastserverManagement but can you tell how do they recruit server admins, what skills they expect and what qualifications should the techs need to have

Originally posted by cunning
hmm, as usual Bobs comments out here.

Exactly, what skills are you talking about, and who performs what tasks, how does the management level structures

Does technical staff answers the support tickets. who handles the billing part, can server admins talk live if there is a live chat system,

If there is a live chat on my hosting site and on one side a current client comes and asks about his queries, and on the other side a prospect comes and ask presales questions, how is it handled.


The management should assess continuously each function being performed within that outsourcing company considering your support operation as a strategic asset to be leveraged and to determine the component of its core competency.

The management is responsible for organizing different training program to motivate their employee and excel the best from them making them much knowledgeable, capable, and competent and by formulating the strategic plan for building and managing your customer relationship with the ability to identify your customer base and to satisfy their need and wants.

It’s a prime duty of management staff to measure and report to their senior management the customer satisfaction by evaluating the level of service they are providing to your customers. The management trained their staff how to increase the level of satisfaction of your customers, how to tackle a critical issues, time management and effectiveness & also their internal satisfaction coordinating with the support organization and the management.

Some time your customer demand service on their own terms, so the management should ensures to synchronize the people, best technology, and process it at their best level to manage it effectively in order to keep them satisfied doing it extendedly well.

Apart that management of that outsourcing company should educate their management executives how to implement benchmarking system including different methodology to meet the overall goal and consistent growth to their outsourced company.

Dear Cunning,

Your question is really admirable. Its very difficult to compile your question from a support company point of view. Technical support companies just need not have to look after technical skills and abilities from their employees but have to manage and organize the strength in a proper channel. Here is what RootSupport works... we have decentrailzed teams working round the clock, major teams for cPanel, Plesk, Ensim etc... and specialised expert Sr. System administrators as project leaders who can supervise all the admin stuff. Now the question of trained man power comes in mind, this is the most important factor the support company has to play... so here is what he have done is we have our own inhouse training centre where we train our employees with all the hosting stuff, expert administrators are appointed to train and skill our employees.

The basic criteria we look into our techs are:

- Excellent technical skills in OS internals & Control Panel level.
- Good english written & communication skills.

Hello cunning,

I would like to give you a client point of view. We tried a few outsourcing companies when we started a year and a half ago. At first our clients were not happy at all with the support they received until we hired Root Support. Since then we are living our own success story :stickout:

What make root support standout ?

1) They are always patient and nice with clients. They will do everything they can to fix a problem until the client is 110% satisfied (I said 110% not 100%).

2) Whenever we have a question they answer it immediately on MSN no delay! (They do not ask us to log a ticket in their system) So far they are the only ones I know who do this.

3) They are skilled, They fixed complexes problems related to our hardware firewall, sitestudio...

As Aussie Bob said, most of their techs are computer engineers. I don't know if we could afford computer engineers working 24 hours a day here in USA and Canada hehe This is the reason why these companies are located in India, this is where you get the most for your penny.

Have a nice day!