I'm at my wits end about this...
I run a small hosting company (about a hundred customers spread over two servers), I don't oversell (please don't shift the discussion to this, as my decision was personal and could change) and I provide "24 hour" support to every and all of my customers by providing them an instant messaging address and a cell phone number where I can always be reached. Almost all my customers have developed a somewhat "personal" relationship with myself and my one support staff member, and I like to consider ourselves a family. I even upgraded an entire server to PHP5 just because one client developed a script that would only function in a php5 enviroment.

Here comes the problem:

Now, even more then ever, I'm getting complaints from users who create their own problems in a shared hosting enviroment and come crying back to me to fix their problems.
One user dropped a full mysql database from his site, and when the php script attempted to call the connection, it failed. He sent me almost 10 instant messages asking "why the database server was down"

I was very polite in replying that infact the database server was completely intact and serving many other sites right at that very moment, and after digging around in his cPanel I was able to find that he had infact completely removed the file. Lucky for him, I keep daily backups. This one happened to be from noon (12pm) pacific time, about 18 hours from when he screwed up his site... when I (went above and beyond, in my opinion) and restored his site, he came back to me and complained that he lost posts on his forum from the previous night.

Stuff like that makes me want to pull my hair out.

Becuase all of these people know me by name and I do appreciate their business, I don't want to come flat out and say "I won't fix your own problems / coding errors / accidential deletions," but I'd like some way of ushering out the "babysitting" that I feel like I've been excecuting on my customers.

Any input would really be apprecaited.

-- if you're wondering if the event above was an isolated event, stuff like that happens almost daily these days. Somehow I got loaded up with a boatload of incompetents :(
I've even had requests to install phpBB for people, and I offer fantastico.

Been here, done that.

Basically what you've done (and I think its a good thing) is give people really excellent service and gone beyond what most hosting companies would do and I applaud you for that. What you've done though is oversold two things, your time and energy. (see I got it in there). As you are getting bigger more and more people are making requests and making your life harder.


What you have to start doing is saying no as if you go to any major hosting company they won't do PHPBB installs, some charge for restoring backups. You really have two choices as I see it

1) Hire someone to help you out to do all this sort of thing
2) Start saying to people you have to pay for this at a cost of $ or just say no

my 2c

Rus

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, rus. The "above and beyond" has kinda become a trademark, and for that reason I do get loads of referrerd customers, (and the refer-ees recieve no bonus for bringing new customers), which I do appreciate but I want to meet a happy medium.

I did bring one new fellow aboard to help with the slightly more menial tasks, but my profit margins aren't soaring high enough to justify any more employees.

I am, at this point, considering charging one time fees for "managment," but theres a slight (and unfortunate) conflcition with the nitch market I've developed that half-prevents such a tactic.

Thanks for your input,
T

You can`t make everyone happy... It`s a hard lesson but everyone has to learn it sooner or later.

I was more or less in the same situation a while back. Basically, I made it clear to everyone that support via msn messenger or contacting me by email is totally unofficial support and provided at my own convenience. If I have time for a customer, then I will do all I can to help him/her out. If I don't, then I simply ask them to use the support desk and let my techs handle it.

By making it clear to customers that it is an unofficial support medium, they understand at times when I can't help.

As for customers that create problems for themselves, we help out as much as we can. However after resolving the problem we make it clear to them who was responsible for the problem and although we have fixed it now, we may charge admin fees next time they make the same mistake...

We have to take this approach to ensure every customer gets equal treatment. It may be slightly harsh but I see it as the only way to keep almost everyone happy...

Working well for us so far...

You have to separate your emotions from business. Business is business...period. These people, while you appreciate their business to no end and probably like most of them, they are not your friends. You aren't hosting their site as a favor, you are in this to make money. You need to sit down and make clear guidelines (for YOURSELF) of what is included in your support and what is not. If you don't, you will literally make yourself sick.

How do I know? I've been exactly where you are. I couldn't stand the thought of someone thinking I didn't help them enough...or being upset with me. The more customers you get, the worse this situation is going to be for you. You need to have clear lines of "YOU" time and "WORK" time. During "YOU" time, it is imperative to your long-term success that you only work in the event of an emergency that can't be handled by anyone else. Hire somene else to handle the off hours. If you can't afford to hire someone else, you need to sit down and reassess your business plan. You also need to charge for most things that you think "Well, it will only take a few minutes...I'm not going to charge the customer for that." Its called BUSINESS and if you don't charge for it two things will happen: 1. The customer will demand/expect that you do more and more at no charge. 2. You will eventually end up so busy with all these little things that you won't have time to properly manage the rest of your business...and you won't be able to hire anyone to help, because you're not charging for these things.

I speak from experience on this one! :)

--Tina

The "above and beyond" has kinda become a trademark



I am, at this point, considering charging one time fees for "managment," but theres a slight (and unfortunate) conflcition with the nitch market I've developed that half-prevents such a tactic.


Offer two levels of service, a managed and an unmanaged. Explain politely but firmly to people on the unmanaged services, that if they need help, it will either cost $$ or they shoudl upgrade to the managed offering.

Sadly by giving your time away free you've dug a hole, and although it might be your "selling-point" unless you're charging enough to cover the "incidents" the business and you will suffer.

I must say that Rus said it best. But, I would have to say that you must be doing something right because you have a group of customers that have faith that you can fix it. You can be like one of the other host who offer non personal support or maybe you can hire someone to take care of those kind of things and have them be less of a priority.
just my 2 cents

I would do what othellotech said. Offer a Basic Support, and a Full Support version. If a user has a rediculous support request and only has the basic plan, than they will have to upgrade for your help. This will also keep people from asking you to fix their problems if they are just too lazy to figure it out themselves.

Good Luck, let us know what you decide to do!

I was in a similar position a couple of years back where everyone could get a hold of me directly and on MSN. It was basically the same situation as you have and it is extremely taxing. There is a point where you start doing more damage than good in that model though because you can't always be happy at 4am when someone deletes their entire home directly with FrontPage for the 10th time.

I did as said above and made a LOT of announcements that the only SUPPORTED method to contact WWM would be through the ticket center. It will take a few months to get it going, but it is much nicer to get a page on your phone than a call at 4am. It at least gives you the time to wake up before you are on with a customer. The second thing this does is it allows you to hire someone or a service to help you with support. If everyone is contacting you directly then there is no source for other employees/helpers to answer tickets. We put a 4 hour SLA on the tickets and in over 2 years people have adapted it and actually find out they get a lot better response times and resolution times than before.

Do your ticket system right and use that FAQ/Knowlegebase as much as you can. Lots of our users find their own answers before they even submit tickets. Invest in flash tutorials as that will visually show them what you can't on the phone or in email.

You have to separate your emotions from business. Business is business...period. These people, while you appreciate their business to no end and probably like most of them, they are not your friends. You aren't hosting their site as a favor, you are in this to make money. You need to sit down and make clear guidelines (for YOURSELF) of what is included in your support and what is not. If you don't, you will literally make yourself sick.

How do I know? I've been exactly where you are. I couldn't stand the thought of someone thinking I didn't help them enough...or being upset with me. The more customers you get, the worse this situation is going to be for you. You need to have clear lines of "YOU" time and "WORK" time. During "YOU" time, it is imperative to your long-term success that you only work in the event of an emergency that can't be handled by anyone else. Hire somene else to handle the off hours. If you can't afford to hire someone else, you need to sit down and reassess your business plan. You also need to charge for most things that you think "Well, it will only take a few minutes...I'm not going to charge the customer for that." Its called BUSINESS and if you don't charge for it two things will happen: 1. The customer will demand/expect that you do more and more at no charge. 2. You will eventually end up so busy with all these little things that you won't have time to properly manage the rest of your business...and you won't be able to hire anyone to help, because you're not charging for these things.

I speak from experience on this one! :)

--Tina
This is excellent advice and the best you will get. You have to remember this is a business and you have to get paid for ALL of your time one way or another. You have to decide what IS covered by normal suporta nd what ISN'T. Set yourself a realistic hourly rate for your time and make sure you bill out on anything outside of the normal support. Even if a job only takes you 2 or 5 minutes you bill in 15 minute blocks.

As Tina says, if you do things outside of your normal scope then your clients will expect it and more the next time. At some point you have to say 'of course I can help you with that, but I'm afraid it falls outside of our normal support and would have to be charged as extra at $xx'.

If it a CLIENT created problem then they have to be prepared to payfor YOU to fix it, on their behalf, if they can't fix their own errors or mistakes.

I also agree with Tina. She knows her stuff, having build affordablehost.com to a gentle giant before she sold it. She's been there, in your shoes, and knows what she is talking about.

:)

My personal experience is similar. There comes a point when you must move from "hobby" to "business", and this is always going to cause a shift in how your business is operated on a daily basis.

The fact is that you CAN continue to offer the very personal support and service your customers love... but you must pay for it by hiring quality support staff... and that means you will probably need to raise your hosting prices to pay for it.

Or.. you can keep your pricing as it is now, and tell people that you can no longer afford to provide the personal support/service as you have in the past... and they have a choice of either paying extra for it, or doing things themselves.

As for your experience with the person who killed their own database and then blames you for it... this is normal, and is an everyday occurance for most hosting companies. There are many customers who do not know what they are doing, and of course they will blame everyone else except themselves. My advice is to gently tell this customer that you have done everything you can to help, hte problem was NOT caused by you, and that if they don't like your service, then you can give them the latest backup if they prefer t to take their business somewhere else.

Good luck! Be sure to come back and let us know how your growing pains are going. :)

I am a strong believer in the concept of raising prices until you reach a happy medium: Either you make enough money to hire an additional employee or you make enough money to make your time worth it for the personal service.

My advice: Do not lose the personal service. Just charge for it. :)

- John C.