Im going to pitch this idea out, I would like ALL of you to give me a idea on what you think of it.

Here in the near future, I would like to start a site, based on TECH SUPPORT for 'Web Companies'. This site will be ran by MANY computer tech/web gurus, and will be setup to answer ANY questions/problems that any consumer may have.

We will have a button setup to put on the support page of your website, this will then forward them to our site, where they can either contact us via phone, or through a 'Email Submit Form'.

How it works: (EXAMPLE)
THE CONSUMER: I the consumer am having troubles getting my domain forwarding setup. What should I do?

YOUR COMPANY: Hello, please click the www.somesite.com button on our support page for 24/7/365 live tech support.

MY COMPANY: Once the customer has clicked our button on your support page, we will then help them untill there questions are full-filled.

We are working at starting pricing at around a $150 one time fee. Which will intitle one year of support for your site. Please feel free to let me know what you fully think about this, because you are the consumers/web providers who would be purchasing this type of plan, if interested.

Thanks,
Jayson H
Abit@webchat.org
katana.webchat.org
Services Administrator

Hello:

there are a couple of companies that do offer this already, www.bobcares.com and... oh geese (forgive me whoever you are) there is another one that I believe just started posting on this board, looks to be a new company.

I would certainly order your services for $150 per year (provided the service was of good quality)

However, I think you would go out of business with prices like that... Think about it. You are offering unlimited tech support for my hosting company? What if I have 1000 clients, and get about 50 support requests per day? say even if they are easy questions, and each one takes about 10 minutes or less, thats still about 500 minutes, or somewhere around 8 hours. That means onefull time employee. Even at minumum wage you are going to be losing money really fast. a couple weeks and you would be in the hole.

You would also have overhead to consider... a multi-line phone line setup, 1-800 number, web hosting... general business expenses.. etc.

Its a great idea, but I don't think you could do it for prices like that. If you can, you have my business!

Thanks for the reply.

I actually have about 6 friends who are going to be working on this with me, so there will be no hiring or payout involved. 'Which helps.' I have also tossed around the idea of charging per customer. Such as $0.30 cents to $0.60 cents per customer, no matter what the question/problem might be.

Now for the web hosting, I currently have a T1 at the current place I work at, with full access to it. So hosting wouldnt be a problem. I would however be setting up a 1-800 # which in my area runs very cheap. With rates at about $0.07 cents per minute.

Thanks for your interest, and I would love to here more of your opinions on this. If I get enough people interested, I will be starting it up asap.

Why not get a 900 number and charge a very nominal fee, say 10 cents a minute or so plus a base rate to the hosts? Clearly a call that takes 30 minutes to solve should cost more than a 2 minute call and if you're paying the incoming phone bills it will add up very quickly.

the 1-900 idea is a good one... but I don't think I would be willing to pay for my customer;s calls. I don't have any influence on how fast the call goes, and it is very easy to get chatting with a sociable person...

As for the costs and everything... By the sounds of things, you oculd do it, but there is no way you would be happy doing this for $150/yr flat rate as you would end up making about $1/hr or less for your work.

However if you charge a license structure... such as x number of tickets over x amount of time, that would probably work... or just a per ticket price...

I am too tired to put much wisdom into this right now...

Good Luck!

That sounds like a good idea, I think Im probably going to use the ticket 'system' idea. Instead of charging a flat rate. Lets say x amount of money for x amount of tickets.

Still looking for more opinions, all of your opinions count!

your idea sounds promising, when do you intend to start? :)

Im hoping to have the site fully launched within the next month or so, I need to get things worked out with my tech support, and I need to get a web design put together, to offer the ticket system, as discussed above. Thanks for your interest!

As said above, more opinions are appreciated, seeing how you are the consumer of this web site.

The problem is, unless the host is running a commercial control panel....the answers are going to be different for each host. You'll have to invest time JUST to find out how each host runs their servers...and what they offer.

For example, "How do I setup a subdomain?"

Host 1: "Log into your control panel and click on..."

Host 2: "We don't offer subdomains"

Host 3: "We can set that up for you, just email support"

Host 4: "You can order that through our order form"


....and so on and so on and that's JUST for subdomains. That doesn't cover the 100 other support calls we, as a small/medium, hosting company will get on a busy day.

That's the main reason why I am really hesitant to hire bobcares. I have no doubt that he runs a quality service and that many are happy. However, each time we hire a new tech support guy...there is about a week or two that is spent just getting used to our business and how we do things. Now, an outside support company with many, many techs, working on many different companies support systems - how do they possibly remember everything? I worry that there's just too much opportunity for confusion.

One of my *very* part-time support guys makes $150 per week...there's no way you're going to be able to pull this off for $150 per year. I would say that you would have to charge a company, like ours, at least $350 - $500 a week to make this idea fly.

I think somewhere, there's a good idea in this proposal...but you would have to work on it some more. I would definitely not depend on "friends who are going to help me out". That will last only until they have something better to do...or until it starts to feel like real work. That wouldn't be fair to your customers.

--Tina

You make a very good point on this whole idea. I have put alot of this into consideration, but many questions are based on things that can be pulled from a providers FAQ, My team will be thoroughly reading each providers FAQ, and getting in-depth info from each provider, on certain things such as sub-domains, adding email accounts, etc.. MOST and I mean about 90% of questions I have encountered, are usuallly answered without having to go back to the providers information, because they are BASIC questions. I will make sure my team gets all information that is needed, and then some. So that we can FULLY help a customers needs.

Sounds like a great idea, Jayson. :)

I believe the pay per ticket route is the way to go. It would be advantageous if you could offer the service in some sort of anonymous fashion. That is, customers would email support@theirhost.com which would be forwarded to you. Then you could email back under some anonymous name like www.customersupport.com (I will PM you one that I thought might work... I know that there are a lot of domain addicts here on WHT, me included, who can't resist buying just one more ;) ).

You also might consider having two levels of service. One for just email support and a slightly more expensive rate for 800 telephone support. You've got to pay for those long distance charges in some way. BTW, if you look around, you can probably get 800 service for 5 cents per minute or less with volume. :cool:


Best of Luck,

Keith

Thanks for your reply. I will be purchasing the two domains you have given me, I think those are perfect for this business idea. Depending on how this goes, I will probably be purchasing a 1-800 # in the near future, and setting up the dual support, where the 'Web Company' can purchase different plans.

Thanks for all of your replies, more opinions are always appreciated, because it helps me to better this business for you.

One thing you may want to consider is either only offering support of specific setups.. i.e. OS and or control panel specific. You could also have different people/teams for each configuration.
If I remember correctly bobcares.com does not offer windows support... although I wouldn't suggest going for windows only... I wouldn't even want to do windows at all myself...lol...

I will probably have someone helping on each OS, Such as *nix, linux, Windows, etc.. I myself, dont mind offering windows support. Even though I am a unix person. I still have my knowledge base of Windows and its applications. ;)

I have just purchased the domains. They will be the following:
www.yoursupport.info - Will be the site for customer support.
www.yoursupport.biz - Will be the site that offers the 'Tech Support Services', to you the 'Web Companies'.

Thanks Keith for the idea's on the domains. Its greatly appreciated. :)

Look forward to having this setup in the next few months or so, for those of you who are interested.

Any more opinions? Let me know. :) Thanks..