I've been following the industry for a while, and I soon began to notice that there are two kinds of businesses, ones where everything is automated, and one where people prefer to do things themselves.

I try to stay away from as much automated things as possible with things like affiliate programs, calculating taxes, and of course, tech support. These are all things that can be done my hand, a hired hand if needed. I think an actual person at the controls will lead to a lot less mistakes. I've seen peoples' businesses fail because they though something as simple as a billing system was taking care of everything. I think it's important to have someone watching things, and I think that people won't really watch until they actually DO. Just yesterday my partner had to basically sell me the idea of buying TuboTax because I was hell-bent on filling out my own tax forms instead of leaving everything to $40 software (we ended up getting it because it would be cheaper than buying 1099 forms 4 times a year). I also prefer to have at least one person watching the HelpDesk at all times to minimize ticket response times, and be able for live assistance. I think the customers would like that more than having to wait for an email response.

So which are you? Taking into consideration time, money, and of course quality of service, would you prefer to have things mostly automated, or done by hand?

Hi!
I was just about too post the same question, right before I saw this :D. I personally was going to stick with Manual/Moderated sign-ups, simply due to the fact that there are so many people commiting fraud out there, I would like to see who there are first :).

I agree with you on the Live Chat / Helpdesk theory. I think that a client should not have to wait no more than 14 hours MAX for a support request, and sales is reduced to 8 hours MAX. Live Chat I will have monitored 24x7 by several different people. 1 Support Associate and 1 Sales Associate MINIMUM at all times :).

Thanks,

That's definitely the best way to run a business. It's a major deciding factor of customer satisfaction, epecially for a business like ours that relies quite a bit on word-of-mouth advertisement. I think automated signup would be fine, provided that service is manually (like it usually is) enabled. That way a tech/sales rep could review the order in detail.

Hello Again,
The only thing I worry about when doing manual, is what is a good time frame for saying "All accounts will be activated with XX hours". What would be a good time to advertise for that? How long would you want to wait?

Thanks again,

What we do currently is a combo of fraud guardian, varilogix, and manual approval. Way it works is when you place your order the credentials are verefied via fraud guardian and it gives the system a score (between 1 and 10) based on the score it'll give a phone call specifying the service ordered and the price, next it asks voice voice verification which is recorded and can be used for credit card disputes. If those two steps go through the account is activated and placed into the manual call queue where someone calls the client (usually alex) and confirms everything for the 2nd time.

To answer your question more directly, I would say that activating accounts within 12 hours should be considered good, less is of course better.

I was looking for such a system. I am assuming fraudguardian.com ?

Thanks,

http://www.moderngigabyte.net/fraudguardian/index.htm

enjoy!

Thanks guys!

Automation reduces costs and makes hosting more affordable. Anything that can be automated to do things faster is worth it..

As far as automated signups, I think all web hosting signups are automated these days. The only thing that is not automated in most cases is the verification bit, and usually manually verifying orders pay good dividents in fraud prevention.

Support cannot be automated, apart from having an intelligent knowledgebase. So of course you must have staff 24x7.

Do any of you guys have outsourced staff for support or sales?

Automation helps when trying to run a smooth operation. Of course you can't have everything automated, but the more the better.

No, all support is on-site here, considered it awhile back, went into discussions with a few companies, but realized even with the money saved by going with them, we would end up losing more customers than the savings could make up for.

Automation is key. By having things done automatically, a business can cut its costs hugely because of the number of people that will be needed to operate the automated system rather than people to do all of the tasks that the system takes over. But automation does need to be done right. In the case of order processing, affiliate systems, etc., fraud prevention is very important, and any automated system should have strict fraud prevention policies in place. Also, with things like technical support, automation needs to be done in such a way where the system can give useful information but that it WILL allow clients to get in touch with a real person if they need to. For example, it's good if your system has a useful and searchable knowledge base, trouble shooting guides, etc., and if it has announcements to keep your clients up to date with anything going on, BUT if it doesn't allow the client to contact a living being having tried the automated help systems, it has failed to do its job properly.

Good luck

Outsourced support is a completely different issue. Personally, I don't believe in outsourced support at all. Outsourcing support to a company which is based AND staffed by people in the western world isn't what we're looking at here, I'm talking about outsourcing support to any company who's staff are based in, say, India or China. These people get paid tiny amounts of money, most of which will find its way back into western businesses sooner or later, they may be able to speak and write Englsih, but they usually don't do a very good job of it. There are plenty of people here who don't do a good job of it too, but those who don't try simply don't belong in customer relations. These people often don't know a lot about what they're dealing with and are required to read from a list of common questions and answers (and some companies will even admit this). So no, I don't use outsourced support and no I would never consider it. I'm happy to employ people here in the UK and in the US and pay them set wages, no matter where they're based, but hiring people in developing countries to save money isn't my style.

Yeah, I'm against outsourcing. I'd rather invest in hand-picked employees. At least that way I can have some quality control.

Our experience is that customers LOVE automation. They want to sign-up or arrange their accounts with 5-6 clicks.

So far i have been able to pinpoint 2 reasons for that as my best guesses :

1 - People do not want to phone in to some place where people are working and talk to someone, while they are themselves (very probably) in the off hours or in the warm coziness of their houses.

2 - People think that, especially about sales assistance or signups, they might be tricked into buying something they did not intend to if they get live aid from a salesperson/assistant.

VERY very oddly, there has been support incidents where situation was urgent to justify anything, but the customer have still not called, instant messengered and instead preferred email. When asked why s/he did not use IM or phone addresses which go out in every support person's email as signature, some even said that 'oh i havent noticed that'. same goes for the website.

I could never automate my sign-ups. I like to know exactly what's happening with each customer, and I will continue to do so. The only thing that's automated are my invoice checks. But then, they still get e-mailed to me just incase theres an error.

It's prooven good to be manual. I've had no complaints yet, and I've experienced fraud already, which was dealt with easily and the accounts were never set-up.

I would choose to employ first. Though, if I cannot find anyone, the only other option would be to outsource it. Both are "ok" in my mind, though I favour employees more.

I soon began to notice that there are two kinds of businesses, ones where everything is automated, and one where people prefer to do things themselves.
Or you could look at it like this; there are two kinds of businesses, those that want to make money, and those that don't. If you have the time/inclination to set up new accounts manually, you are probably the latter.

I think an actual person at the controls will lead to a lot less mistakes.
Change "less" to "more" and you're absolutely right.

If you offer me the choice between a well written script to input/manipulate data or a person to do the same thing, I'll take the script every time. And I'll spend less time fixing mistakes.

These aren't hamburgers. You don't need some pimply kid to flip and wrap every one for you. It's data. Manually handling data that can be handled by code is pointless and unprofitable.