I don't know weather this is right place to ask or not. We have some resellers which are completely dumb with no experience in hosting but with good contacts. You can imagine their dumbness by this that if, they need to host 10 domains in one day then we have to tell them whole procedure of hosting that domain via HostingContoller 10 times on a phone call or e-mail :crying:

The most worst thing is that they do not take care of their passwords at all and therefore we have to re-set their passwords every week. Due to their carelessness 2-3 times thier accounts were get hacked. Still 3 to 4 months remaining in their one year contract to get expired.

Any suggestion how to tackle these types of client? I am sure this forum has many experienced web hosts any they might have delt with such type of clients in the past. So, any word of advice will be appriciated.

Hi Aniket,

I can understand your stress.
Here my suggestion:
Standby for a procedure with step by step. Best if you do screenshot and with some desription. Put up on your site. In future, if they forget how to setup hosting again, point them to that page.

As for resetting password, i don't think you can run away from this.

Ya, we did that. We have sent them step by step procedure many times but of no use. Actually they are some garment export company and because of great contacts they started web hosting too. None of thier staff is prof in computers (I guess).

Try some flash tutorials , they are preety catchy to noobs

Try some flash tutorials , they are preety catchy to noobs

Yep - and password resets can be automated by some control panels too.

Thread moved to Running a Web Hosting Business.

I think you should send them step by step description to handle their routine problem or organize a training seminar to educate their staff if they are such valuable customers to you.

A good detailed knowledgebase should suffice..
They probably are entitled to such support no matter how many times they ask. You could kindly just reply that this issue has already been covered in your knowledgebase and ask them to consult that for assistance as anything you tell them with be directly from that.

But really this is just one of the quirks of web hosting and it's difficult to go around it or refuse/charge for help.. Maybe alter your TOS to say that excessive support requests are subject to a charge.

Your last option would be to outsource and get a cheap package. Quality won't be all that but it will certainly reduce your workload...

If I was in the budget market and it got that bad I would probably start tracking the time I spend with them and send them a letter at the end of the month with something like...

Dear <customer name>:

We strive to offer the best service possible for our customers and truly hope that you are 100% satisfied with our service so far. However, there is one area of concern that I feel needs to be addressed.

It has come to my attention that a disproportionate amount of support resources are being used supporting your hosting accounts. As can be seen on the table below the requests vary from password resets to <whatever>. While we take great pride in helping customers as much as possible and want to keep you satisfied, the sheer volume of low priority request is becoming a concern. As a business person yourself, I'm sure you can appreciate how difficult it can be to sustain a high level of support with the very little profit margins found in a hosting business.

In order to continue to offer great service while maintaining low prices we have developed many resources for common requests in the form of step by step Flash tutorials, an extensive knowledge base, etc. You can find links to those resources on the following site: yoursite.com/supportpage.htm. These resources have allowed our customers to do things faster than we ever could since we prioritize requests by the severity of the issue. Your help in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Rest assure that we value your patronage and hope to have a very long business relationship.

If I was in the budget market and it got that bad I would probably start tracking the time I spend with them and send them a letter at the end of the month with something like...

Dear <customer name>:

We strive to offer the best service possible for our customers and truly hope that you are 100% satisfied with our service so far. However, there is one area of concern that I feel needs to be addressed.

It has come to my attention that a disproportionate amount of support resources are being used supporting your hosting accounts. As can be seen on the table below the requests vary from password resets to <whatever>. While we take great pride in helping customers as much as possible and want to keep you satisfied, the sheer volume of low priority request is becoming a concern. As a business person yourself, I'm sure you can appreciate how difficult it can be to sustain a high level of support with the very little profit margins found in a hosting business.

In order to continue to offer great service while maintaining low prices we have developed many resources for common requests in the form of step by step Flash tutorials, an extensive knowledge base, etc. You can find links to those resources on the following site: yoursite.com/supportpage.htm. These resources have allowed our customers to do things faster than we ever could since we prioritize requests by the severity of the issue. Your help in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Rest assure that we value your patronage and hope to have a very long business relationship.
Hi thanks for this.....

We have added some support plan charges too in that letter and sent it to across all customers who need more then 30 Support hours in a month.

Lets see

A good detailed knowledgebase should suffice..
They probably are entitled to such support no matter how many times they ask. You could kindly just reply that this issue has already been covered in your knowledgebase and ask them to consult that for assistance as anything you tell them with be directly from that.

But really this is just one of the quirks of web hosting and it's difficult to go around it or refuse/charge for help.. Maybe alter your TOS to say that excessive support requests are subject to a charge.

Your last option would be to outsource and get a cheap package. Quality won't be all that but it will certainly reduce your workload...
Our control panel already have good FLASH and Text tutorials. But some customer don't want to try anything else other then a phone call. Anyways thanks for your advice.

I am getting some very good ideas out of this thread. May be this will help to all of us.

I think you should send them step by step description to handle their routine problem or organize a training seminar to educate their staff if they are such valuable customers to you.
We are around 1000 Kms apart. So, a training seminar would be very costly affair. thanks for your advice. :)

We are around 1000 Kms apart. So, a training seminar would be very costly affair. thanks for your advice. :)
___________________________________________________________________

BTW my point was if you could organize training seminar through video/web conferencing allowing your customers to connect and educate them in real time.

A good detailed knowledgebase should suffice..
They probably are entitled to such support no matter how many times they ask. You could kindly just reply that this issue has already been covered in your knowledgebase and ask them to consult that for assistance as anything you tell them with be directly from that.

But really this is just one of the quirks of web hosting and it's difficult to go around it or refuse/charge for help.. Maybe alter your TOS to say that excessive support requests are subject to a charge.

Your last option would be to outsource and get a cheap package. Quality won't be all that but it will certainly reduce your workload...
"Outsouring of support" I dont think would be good Idea when we have some dedicated staff for this. Also it can create some mess.

We have added some support plan charges too in that letter and sent it to across all customers who need more then 30 Support hours in a month.
Glad to help. Come back in a month or two and let us know how it went.