Hey guys,

I've been reading these forums for a few weeks now, im currently in the process of starting up a web hosting company and have found lots of great advice thus far. Last night I was trying to think what kind of suppor questions are going to be asked the most, I didn't really come up with much so I thought i'd ask here :)

Thanks in advance.

Depends who you're targeting really, if you're going after the average home user then things related to setting up nameservers/email/etc. will be high on the list. If you're selling dedicated servers/VPS's then you're going to be in a whole different ball game.

Client: My website doesn't work!!! Fix it!
Support: Dear Sir, have you tried plugging in your computer?
Client: It works now!!! Thx!

Lol, that's a good one bqinternet!

There really is no 'common' support request, at least not in my experience. They range all over the place, and they're all very weird requests that you never would have expected! :P

Common one we seem to get is about email clients.

Generally outgoing mail not working, which is due to their ISP blocking ports, and we simply direct them to the other outgoing mail port.

Ilandor,

You would really need to tell us more about what service you are offering and who you will be targeting. However, having said that, there are no real common support questions. The best is to simply cover the basics – what they should know but for some reason don’t. Covering some more advanced things would also be nice for clients, but it’s not a necessity providing you offer decent support via email.

Well at first we're just gonna offer shared and reseller web hosting, then if it goes well, we want to offer other services such as gaming servers, voice comm. servers, co-location and perhaps dedicated servers. Those wont be for a while though.

I guess we will be targetting from individual users to small business.

We're planning to do live chat, e-mail support and have a ticket system for issues that need more security, once we've got an idea of the kind of questions we'll be getting, we'll offer phone support too.

Thanks for the help so far :)

Just some friendly advice: If all is going well, stick with the things that are going well. Stay focused - don't branch out.

We're just finishing cleaning up from our "branching out" over this past summer. It hasn't been pretty, and we're now back on track, but I don't recommend going that route at all. Specialize, specialize, specialize! :)

Originally posted by Ilandor
Hey guys,

I've been reading these forums for a few weeks now, im currently in the process of starting up a web hosting company and have found lots of great advice thus far. Last night I was trying to think what kind of suppor questions are going to be asked the most, I didn't really come up with much so I thought i'd ask here :)

Thanks in advance.

Email setup is always a popular one.

Originally posted by miniRank.com
Email setup is always a popular one.

Yep .. very true.. Many times people do not use correct mail server configuration and are hence unable to send and receive mail.

Also many people (often newbies) need dns server information which is one of the most asked questions.

I cant get my email!
I cant get to my website!
That is pretty much the jist of it.

Yeap email setup is the most common support question, we got some email setup demos from one of the demo providing companies giving flash demos on Outlook, Communicator etc , does cut down quite a lot of explaining.

But many clients are sometimes lazy to go through even detailed tutorials :(

FAQ and Tutorials are a good source to give a demo of common questions/issues faced, but often clients dont even check that page and directly contact support (especially when they know their host offers live chat or a toll free number)

Originally posted by bqinternet
Client: My website doesn't work!!! Fix it!
Support: Dear Sir, have you tried plugging in your computer?
Client: It works now!!! Thx!


Client: Why are you people sending me an invoice for website hosting services? I could never figure out how to get it to work.

Support Tech: I appologize for the inconvenience. Did you submit a support ticket?

Client: What's that?

Originally posted by Bill-zilonhost
Client: Why are you people sending me an invoice for website hosting services? I could never figure out how to get it to work.

Support Tech: I appologize for the inconvenience. Did you submit a support ticket?

Client: What's that?

Well "support ticket" is sometimes a new concept for newbies.

It was for me too, when I was new in this field.

The concept of support ticket should be explictly explained on the support page provided by the host. I am sure 9 out of 10 newbies will view the support page (might wont read the FAQ, but will definately view the support page - which is the only source for them to contact their host) and then know the concept of support ticket.

We tend to get plenty of questions on using the control panel and the system specs i.e. what mods does apache have compilied in, do you support GD etc. Also questions on backups from the more savvy users. It really depends on the technical level of the user. With time build up a decent FAQ and you can redirect queries to to make response times to questions quicker.