I emailed bobcares.com about a week ago and never heard back from them Oh well I guess they don't want my business. Too bad, they looked like a good deal. Does anyone know of similar service that responds to their sales emails?

:bawling:

You should know that pre-sales mail is the last to get answered.
I've heard they've been busy.
But, I haven't used them or attempted to contact them.

Good luck.

You know I read that in another thread somewhere. It doesn't make any sense. It's great that their support response time is supposedly fast, but I sent my email about a week ago and I saw a post from the bobcares sales rep saying he had 210 emails to go through. Well I go through about 3-400 per day, so I don't buy it. If you can't answer a sales query in a week's time, then there is something wrong with your business and you need to readjust. I don't think I want to entrust my tech support to an organization that ignores pre-sales emails. At the very least, you set up an autoresponder that says something like:

"Due to the unusually high number of sales queries we're getting, we are backlogged and apologize for the delay in answering your email"

At least then I would know what's going on. The only reason I know that I'm probably not just being ignored, is because I dug through threads on webhostingtalk. A potential customer shoouldn't have to do that IMHO. So I look elsewhere......

Originally posted by rbro
. . . . . . At the very least, you set up an autoresponder that says something like:

"Due to the unusually high number of sales queries we're getting, we are backlogged and apologize for the delay in answering your email" . . . . . . Even then I would be upset enough to move on.
I answer a lot of emails. And could always find the time to write a quick note that I received their mail and would be following up within XX time.

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
Even then I would be upset enough to move on.
I answer a lot of emails. And could always find the time to write a quick note that I received their mail and would be following up within XX time.

I hear ya. It's really a shame, because they seemed like they had a really good service. Oh well......

I've also sent in an inquiry about a few weeks ago *still waiting for a reply*. Obviously they don't care. Screw that. I'll handle my own support. :eek:

Hmmm... I would think most hosts would put pre-sales questions first; but most do put it last in my experience. Don't they want new clients? I thought in any business, sales came first???

Here was an earlier response from them in another thread...
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42822&highlight=bobcares

You are right... there is no excuse for not answering sales questions other than the fact that they are probably just not setup to handle the number of sales inquiries that they are getting. They really need to get a large sales team going, b/c they are getting quite a bad reputation around here for being slow on sales questions...

I had been emailing them back and forth for about a month back in december. I finally decided to get signed up with them about 2 weeks ago. It took 5+ days to get everything setup (and more than 1 unanswered email), but since everything has been setup... it's been smooth sailing! It's so nice not to have to handle support questions!

I would suggest that you stick with it. Send them an email saying "I sent an email earlier, but it was unanswered". If they don't answer that one within 24 hours, send them another one. They'll eventually get around to you. I too was a little put off by their response time on their sales questions, but the speed and accuracy of their support more than makes up for it!

Originally posted by rbro
Does anyone know of similar service that responds to their sales emails?

http://www.rapidisupport.com is an interesting alternative.

Cheers

Gary

I sent them a sales e-mail two weeks ago that has not been answered. I sent another today. I really want to use their service but am skeptical. Andrew

I've never used them yet, I wish they would support NT too!

I think it's better they are not answering all the sales emails so it doesn't take away from support ;) Then again, they should get a good sales team!

Originally posted by Editor


http://www.rapidisupport.com is an interesting alternative.

Cheers

Gary

Hmm. They look kinda interesting. Do you have any experience with them or know anyone who does?

Originally posted by rbro
Hmm. They look kinda interesting. Do you have any experience with them or know anyone who does?

No mate. But there's a thread under Related Offers called "Outsourcing your Support" where I think one person has posted a favourable review. But their company is represented in that specific thread, so they'll probably answer your questions quick enough there.

Cheers

Gary

I could care less how fast their response times are with support. 1st impressions last forever. bobcares.com better get a clue in terms of getting a fricken sales staff to answer their sales questions, how else are they going to get new clients!

gimme a break on "sales answers are put last". that's the most ludicrous answer I have ever heard

We approached them a few months ago to discuss using their services. We got the same response time back then -- about a week between e-mails (and there was some back-and-forth since we had followup questions). We decided not to go with them. Too bad, because they offer an important service for a really good price.

I actually looked into starting something similar to those companies, but the cost of good technicians is roughly 2300-2500 a month, so based on that, and enough people for a 24/7 staff and the required clients to break even would be roughly 55 clients with 1 server each @ 200 a month, so before the time you're able to add a new tech your looking @ 60-65 clients with 1 server each, so you figure each server would have no less than 200 clients on it, thats 11,000 clients, on average 1% to 0.5% of your client base will need help at any one given time, which means one person will be handling 55 to 110 tickets

The only reason bobcares gets away with it, is labor in india is rediclously cheap compared to what it would cost in the US, althou even then its not a real lucrative or sound business plan...

I find that in general, based on your initial inquiry, if sales doesn't think they can convert you into a customer, they're not going to spend a lof of time pursuing you and making sure that your questions get answered.

If your initial email to them is full of questions answered on their web site, or if you are asking for services that they never plan on providing, or if you just made it clear enough to them, that their service isn't right for you, they're going to skip on to the next customer.

This is quite common.

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf

gimme a break on "sales answers are put last". that's the most ludicrous answer I have ever heard

You are right, it is not exactly the best way to do business, but if they are in a bind, and cannot afford to hire anyone else, which would you rather have them concentrate on?

They could have the quickest responding sales team in the world, but if it takes them a week to respond to a support email, then they will have ZERO clients.

I would compare this to many of the companies that stop accepting new clients because they cannot handle all of the sales. I know VDI did this last may, and someone said VO is doing this right now. They are focusing on their current clients, just as bobcares is focusing on their current clients. Now, granted there is a big difference between stating on your web site that you are not accepting new clients vs. just not responding to sales inquiries, but surely you can see the parrallels there...

Bobcares is not a hosting company, they are a support team. Responding to support tickets for them is their main service. For a hosting company, the main service is keeping websites accessible. For any company to be successful, they must prioritize their "main" service before their secondary services. You would surely not be spending time answering sales inquiries if all of your servers were down! Bobcares is just making sure that their clients are taken care of before moving on to secondary services, ie. answering sales inquiries.

Originally posted by mpope
You are right, it is not exactly the best way to do business, but if they are in a bind, and cannot afford to hire anyone else, which would you rather have them concentrate on? Exactly. Too many companies, in many businesses, focus more on selling their services than actually providing service after the sale. In a perfect world there'd always be a balance, but if one side or the other of the business has to take priority certainly it's sales that should be de-emphasized.

That said, for PR reasons at least, it'd be a good idea to give even an automated response to sales inquiries to let people know what's going on.

Hi!
Let me give some stats here. For every 10000 issues handled by us on an average per week, there is an error factor of about 3-6 errors. Now if you see this as a percentage we would be very good... But if you see this as a business plan it could be a reason for us to fail. We have developed various internal systems to make our working close to perfect but we still need to do a lot more... As a hosting company loosing a x customers per day and getting x+n customers per day means you are in profit.. But in the support industry loosing a customer is a total failiure.... We have to be very very Good. We have to remove almost all errors and make the systems close to perfect. Moreover our support depends on many factors like - hosting companies policies, server stability (major factor), our bandwith providers etc.... Having good engineers is just a part in this.... :)

We have to make sure that we can really cater very well to our clients...
This takes a lot of our time. We'd rather not have a new client... than take more clients and mess up with them.. Support is a very important part of their business that we are taking care of. A hosting company can collapse if we are bad... I would never like to take a risk like that... Hence, we are forced to cater to our present clients needs first..

Now, for the next part... you all are correct that sales questions should also be given equal importance... We are working on it and I'm sure we'd be very good at it soon.... I request you all to give us a chance to prove it soon.....

Have a great day .... :)

Regards
Amar

So...I have a question (off the subject). Who is Bob?! :stickout ...just wondering..

For the record, I did finally get a reply from bobcares.com to my sales query.

Hi!
Bob is that happy tech who is there to care always for your needs..... :)




Originally posted by MattS
So...I have a question (off the subject). Who is Bob?! :stickout ...just wondering..

rbro

You got a reply? I sent my first e-mail way before you did. I understand them wanting to take care of their current clients but this is totally ridiculous. Time for me to look at Rapidi.

Originally posted by Andyc
Time for me to look at Rapidi.

Rapidi? More info please :)

no worries, I found this thread:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44650&highlight=rapidi

:)

I have to stand up.

And say something.

BobCares, i saw their deal I signed up. hey if they end up being a bad company, its only 75 bucks down the drain.

Well i do not know how their pre sales work went, but here is my experience with them.

They were delayed it took about 2 dys to get up and running.

but after those 2 days WOW, they learned how i do things, etc.

They take care of my clients, are courteous, and efficient, and always reply to my customers ASAP.

So far, i have been real happy with them.

If they have any questions they email me or contact me by aolim

Sorry, I don't get their business model. In my former life, I have 10 years of high-volume call center experience, including providing outsourced helpdesk solutions in a 450 seat call center.

Their 'Plan One' offers 1 shared support tech, "Shares workload with 3 other clients". I read this to mean 1 rep for every 4 clients. They charge $120 per month per client for this, 3 hour SLA on initial response, 24 hour SLA on resolution, unlimited emails per month.

Their revenue per rep if I'm reading this right is $880 monthly. There's no way this is profitable. This calculates out to an average hourly rate of $5.50 per rep. Burger flippers at McDonalds make more than that!

I'd love to read their contract, as I wonder what the SLA penalties are. Heck, might even sign up just to check it out.

Funny, no online signup form, no telephone number or address, just a contact email of webmaster@rapidisupport.com. I'll let you know what I find out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not intentionally knocking these guys, it just that it doesn't add up. If anyone has any experience with them, I'd love to hear about it.

I was trying to figure their business model out also, and came up with those same numbers. The only thing that I can think is that they are getting interns for free or something. On their site they say that they have an affiliation with some local colleges which is why they can offer such cheap rates.

Maybe one of us should try them out? ;) Whose it going to be?

Maybe they are outsourcing labour to another country

Maybe someone should've taken the time to checkout their site. They clearly state that they use well trained professional from India (fluent in English ofcourse).

Originally posted by AnimeHost
Maybe someone should've taken the time to checkout their site. They clearly state that they use well trained professional from India (fluent in English ofcourse).

I believe the last few posts were referring to rapidisupport.com which is US based as opposed to bobcares.com which is based in India.

rapidisupport.com is NOT based in the US. They are based somewhere in the UK (country code 44).

The response I got back says they do NOT offer a SLA, just a 30-day money back guarantee. Fishy.

They did supply references which I will be checking, as well as some pics of their callcenter (which I am having a problem believing are theirs as their website isn't exactly eye-catching, but the callcenter photos are pretty nice.

Will keep you posted.

Is it possible for you to send me those pictures?

matt@pearlnetwork.com -- thanks!

I have 15 servers under their care, and they have handled 75% of my support (or more) since about November 2000. I have had no complaints from customers and have been with Bobcares for my hosting company since well before they were called Bobcares. I know from personal experience they have been going through a growth spurt even from my personal discussions with the staff there. Since I have noticed both an increase in staff and speed answering tickets (avg less than 1 hour) I can also see where Amar may have been focusing on getting handling existing customers, and being ready to add more customers before he answered sales questions. I am not specifically posting this to defend the fact that replies may not have been timely, but I want to emphasize that these guys do GOOD work, and I have no reservations about recommending them.

I've been in contact with them (sales dept.) several times and always got a reply within 6 hours or less. I feel bad because i'm the one that needs to reply now since a few days and haven't found the time ;)

Well same here. Amar has been fast in replying my queries.

Joe

Amar has been reasonably quick in replying to me as well...

Just an update on rapidisupport.com,

I asked them to put their $5 per missed email in their guaranteed response in a contract, along with a 3 missed in their guaranteed response within 30 days results in a breach of contract which means I can terminate the contract with a refund of setup fees, and I haven't gotten a response yet.

Doesn't surprise me in the least. This is not an unreasonable request given their relatively high monthly fee. Any company that won't back their statement with a SLA contract isn't worth dealing with in my humble opinion. It's no different than a hosting company offering an uptime guarantee.

Just an update on rapidisupport.com,

I asked them to put their $5 per missed email in their guaranteed response in a contract, along with a 3 missed in their guaranteed response within 30 days results in a breach of contract which means I can terminate the contract with a refund of setup fees, and I haven't gotten a response yet.

Doesn't surprise me in the least. This is not an unreasonable request given their relatively high monthly fee. Any company that won't back their statement with a SLA contract isn't worth dealing with in my humble opinion. It's no different than a hosting company offering an uptime guarantee.


This is just an update FROM rapidisupport.com, the reason why we have not answered your request yet is that we are working to complete our legal documents and contracts by Friday. It was out intention to send these documents to you when they where totally completed.


They did supply references which I will be checking, as well as some pics of their callcenter (which I am having a problem believing are theirs as their website isn't exactly eye-catching, but the callcenter photos are pretty nice.

Will keep you posted.


Thanks for your comments on our website, as many times before I have mentioned that our website is a temporary solution and we know it isn't exactly eye catching. We are working on the design of the site -which you can see here http://www.webdefinity.com/rapidisupport/

It will be up soon.

Thanks

I have been using bobcares for over a month now and have found it to be the best $75 per month that I pay. You pay that per hour for most techs in the US.


____________________________
Keith