Hello,

I am new to this forum and this is my first thread here.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Jennifer. I have a reseller hosting account and am interested in web hosting industry.

I have some free spaces in my account to resell.

And here is my question,

How do you support your paying customers?

In order to become a good and responsible web hosting resellers we need to offer good support especially when our customers sites are down but we cant be always online for help. We need to sleep!
Having a forum is okay but I have been customer before, I know 24/7/365 instant support by live chat would help the most.

Would you share your tips here?

Thanks

My first suggestion would to be to hire someone to answer tickets. Also, try not to advertise 24/7/365 support if you can't keep up with it. People understand that you can't be awake every second of the day (like me), and we're only human. I would give the customers a support page with the most options of contact available, be it IM, Forum, Email, Tickets, Phone. You can put something like, 'please allow from 1 up to 24 hours for your inquiry to be processed.' That sounds a bit lame, but if you're a one-woman show, you're gonna have to look at hiring someone to keep up your support hours. :) Ohh, also a FAQ section is really handy for those pesky 'duh' questions.

Welcome to WHT btw, and good morning to you *yawn*.

Sleep???? What's that? Turn the speakers up full blast on your computer, when you get an email, wake up and answer it.
Try and offer 24/7/365 IF you'd like and IF you will be around everyday, or at least have some way to communicate (i.e. Blackberry, etc). Just make sure you add something like all inquiries will be answered within "X" amount of time, then make sure you do it.

Another way you can do it is going with a provider who has end user support. They already have root access to the servers, and in effect, it cuts out the middleman (reseller). Depending on the provider, problems can be resolved much faster.

The reseller should always have access to the ticket system so that he/she will be able to reply or view tickets as well. Clients always like to hear from the people they already know about.

We hired a 4 man 24/7/365 support and administration staff from HostingSupport4U.com/. Our clients can now reach us during any time of the day or night on virtually any level of issue. Best decision we've ever made with our technical support.

Agree with WK-Anthony, I would suggest the same. There are many quality providers that offer end user support.

In this way, you can have true 24/7 support by expert support stuff and also handle support requests on your own if you like!

Also, having an 'outsourced' support company you are able to concentrate more in your business like sales, billing, organising or other services (design/development etc).

If you do not have time to search, here are some hosts that offer end user support (I have not used them, but have only some presales experience) - keep in mind some of them require a small fee for this service.

- Jodohost (H-Sphere)
- Innohosting (Cpanel)
- Webcore (Cpanel)
- Cartika (H-Sphere)
- ResellerZoom (Cpanel)
- Mosso
- Resellerspanel
- WildWestDomains
- Hostopia
.... .. .. ..

I will be compiling a list of resellers with end user support for my own needs in the following weeks - when this is finished I'll make it public.

for starting, I dont know how about your budget. If you have budget enough, you can hire "outsourced supports" or hire someone do the technical work for you. However, I see many starters have to do themselves at the beginning (me too :) ). In this case, as Zachary suggested, do NOT advertise 24/7 support. Customers will be angry when you say 24/7 support, but you cannot answer their questions within an hour. Yes, we DO need sleep. So

1. choose provider carefully. There are many hosts today, but do NOT go with too cheap to be true offers. Go with quality. By this way, it reduces the issues on servers, and the customers dont need to contact you many times saying my web sites are not working :)

2. build a good FAQ. Customers will find answers there with simple issues, and they can resolve themselves.

3. of course, try to answer customers' questions asap. If you dont know the answer, make sure to let them know first. It can take long time to have the answer, so do NOT be silent

if you are starting as a reseller, going with end-users support provider is a good option, as stated above. If you need a dedicated server, you might consider a fully managed server (but make sure to ask them how they manage your server. I am saying about FULLY PROACTIVE management. Provider will need to know server problems and fix them before your rings.

anyway, Jennifer, welcome to the board, and good luck with your hosting business :)

Supporting a reseller account is quite tough for beginners. If you are the type who is not mostly online, then you need really to outsource 1 or 2 heads for at least level 1 support. There are many companies out there offering outsource services via email suppport so check them out.

If you dont have a budget for that, then the best way to do is really dedicate certain times of day that you can really answer support tickets and reflect that on your support page (say your support is open 8am to 8pm Mon to Sat only your time). If you make this clear, there will no false expectations to your customers.

Just be sure you answer them as fast as you can so you build trust and confidence in your services. And remember that when a customer has a problem, even if you can't fix it quickly, for as long as you are responding in a timely manner, they will be comforted.

Hope this helps.

:lovewht:

Thread moved to Running a Web Hosting Business.

As others mentioned...

If you're on a small budget, do your best to answer questions in a timely manner.
Build your online support resources (FAQs, Docs, Tutorials, etc) as best you can.

Once you get to a certain point, you can look into hiring an outsourced company like: Bobcares -- that has a plan for the small "resellers."
Just remember, the support you offer now, has a huge bearing on how things will be in the future. (For ex: If you'll be in business very long, offer quality service, etc.)

Just my two cents :peace:

We hired a 4 man 24/7/365 support and administration staff from HostingSupport4U.com/. Our clients can now reach us during any time of the day or night on virtually any level of issue. Best decision we've ever made with our technical support.

That must be a damn fine company. They're even introducing new words into the English Language.

eg: Metholology

Navigation bar, front page.

EDIT: hah. they edited it and fixed it.

Thanks.

TonyFF,

Let me know when you have done listing all the end user supported host.
I would love to try it out