In searching for a new web host I've found that phone support is pretty much non-existant. Not to mention toll-free support. Tera-byte is my current web host and they have toll-free support and offer quite a bit for the money. No I do not work for them. Makes me wonder if I'm making a mistake switching from them. I have had almost no problems with them, but I would like a few more features, which is why I am considering the switch.

i think more hosts should have phone numbers , kinda makes everything a tad smother when you can call someone and get information to unanswered questions . Then again not everyone needs a phone number in order to have a good business

These days everyones looking for support, services, phone support and *low prices*. If a host could deliver *all* of these, and deliver them well, I would like to see it. Not having phone support is just one way a host saves money so they can pass the savings on to their customers in the form of lower costs - what people are mainly interested in.

Providing they offer a good helpdesk system, then there shouldn't be a problem. It may even be better than phone support as the host can more easily "show" you whats wrong - something hard to do over the phone. Also, it often gives you a way to document your requests so you can refer back to them if you need to.

It's good to have phone support as well, but only for those real emergenicies. However, if you want phone support, you should expect to pay more.

It seems that even the moderately priced web plans do not have phone support either. Usually you can only find it on higher priced plans. Thats whats kinda amazing about Tera-byte. Theirs is even toll-free. I just wish they had a few more features! :(

I agree with jstonehouse. Providing support over the phone is nowhere near as efficient as a good quality ticketing system.

From a customer perspective it's much easier to compose your thoughts and give a good description of the problem that you're having in a ticket. You can also provide dumps of traceroutes, pings, send URLs easily etc etc.

From a host perspective tickets are cheaper, and it's easier to provide far more information to your customer in a more usable format than it is over the phone. As an example, a customer may be having a problem with IE and you need to refer them to the MS knowledge base. Can you imagine giving out one of those URLs over the phone?

A host worth his/her salt will know that a server is down before any customers do. Therefore I see very little benefit in phone support, especially considering the cost burden.

Simon

cost that is a fact of life. A techs time is taken up when someone calls in and wants to know how to setup their email account where with a ticket system he has that answer in his knowledge base and can email it out. He spends 1 minute on that where with a phone call he could spend 15 minutes to do the same thing. When customers were willing to pay $20.00 a month for a hosting account it could be done but for a $5.00 a account one phone call could take the entire profit out of that account for months.

It all comes back to you get what you pay for. I still offer a 800 number for emergency support only, server down etc. All other request go thru the support desk.

Monte

The point I think your missing is that people NEED phone support some times. Of course not everyone is going to use it but you must provide it. I don't understand why some companies don't even have a phone number to call. Just think of yourself. Is the majority of the world going to buy/support any kind of product via email alone? When GearHost started we had an operational 888 number to our operations INCLUDING support for free. Yes there are costs but by making that available it will help your business and help your customers succeed. Another thing to remember is most calls are not support related but rather questions or just "parrot" back what they saw on the web site.

From our experience, it's a must have. It's all about customer service right?

Greetings:

Our parent company offers toll free technical support in North America. They've found it helps increase sales, increase customer retention, and increase the gross margin as people are willing to pay more if they know they can talk to some one on the phone.

They've found also posting a physical address helps a lot as well; and, from time to time they have customers who are traveling stop in.

One of their resellers from Florida (we are in Pennsylvania) who resells for multiple companies stated in a recent face-to-face visit she will use our parent company when she has a client that needs a lot of hand holding; and, will use one of the cheaper companies that offer no telephone support for those that may not need any hand holding.

Originally posted by AQHost
I agree with jstonehouse. Providing support over the phone is nowhere near as efficient as a good quality ticketing system.

From a customer perspective it's much easier to compose your thoughts and give a good description of the problem that you're having in a ticket. You can also provide dumps of traceroutes, pings, send URLs easily etc etc.
Originally posted by jstonehouse
It may even be better than phone support as the host can more easily "show" you whats wrong - something hard to do over the phone. Also, it often gives you a way to document your requests so you can refer back to them if you need to.Yeah, a lot of hosts like to make these arguments. Don't really hold up, though: there's no reason to expect that if you offer phone support you couldn't offer a ticket system as well. And there's no reason why the phone support person can't also have a workstation in front of them from which to log on and "show" the caller what's wrong.

And most inexperienced customers, as even many posts here show, have a very hard time explaining the problems they're having; in large part because they don't know the terminology. They'd be much better off in a conversation with a knowledgeable support person.

There's one good, real reason why many hosts don't offer phone support: Not having phone support is just one way a host saves money so they can pass the savings on to their customers in the form of lower costs Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that; and it's true that if a host has a good ticket system and responds promptly there should be no problem with not having phone support.

Phone support also requires a group of people to be in one location all the time. This often isn't how hosting companies are run. There isn't really a need to have people in an office, and support can be handled remotely from anywhere in the world. Saves me from having to drive behind you on the freeway! :D

Originally posted by Chicken
Phone support also requires a group of people to be in one location all the time. This often isn't how hosting companies are run. There isn't really a need to have people in an office, and support can be handled remotely from anywhere in the world. Saves me from having to drive behind you on the freeway! :D
Yes absolutely. It's also damn near impossible to troubleshoot technical aspects of their questions on the phone. There's nothing worse than trying to give someone a url etc over the phone. I don't see phone support as neccessary in the hosting business. Just good fast email/helpdek, forum support is fine, IMO. :)

Phone Support;


1. You will Need full time staff to answer the phone 24x7 ( $ $ $ )

2. The same thing I can tell you on the phone or you can ask me over the phone can be done over email !


That what I think.


;)

Originally posted by Chicken
Phone support also requires a group of people to be in one location all the time.Not at all. It requires a phone number and technology to send a call to wherever a person is available to take it.

I think that phone support should be made available to your customers if they need to call you.

I agree 100% with the fact that it will cost a lot of $ to have phone support, but sometimes a customer is not patience enough to fill out a support ticket or to email you.

The bad side of offering phone support is that people abuse this priviliage.

Also most hosts you will find here are run by kids or college students. Without a centrallized support staff, to service you. But if you look at any major host or a true company they offer phone support.

Originally posted by jayglate
But if you look at any major host or a true company they offer phone support. While I'm not sure what "true company" might mean, basically I agree. The majors offer phone support because they know customers want it, because they know that a well-trained and capable phone support staff can be very effective, and because they can afford to do it. Smaller companies tend not to, because they can't afford to. Trying to whitewash it by saying it's not offered because it doesn't really serve the customers' needs -- the customer might want it, I guess the argument is, but they don't know what's good for them -- is disingenuous, in my view.

Here's where I think at least some form of phone support should be offered, not necessarily toll-free. More than once I had a fairly critical update to post to my site. Problem was FTP was not working. Called support and it was back up in less than 15 minutes. Middle of the night. You can't get that kind of response via a ticketing system in my opinion. I guess it doesn't have to be phone support, but there should at least be someone there 24x7 that you can chat with or get a fairly quick turnaround by email. Even that seems difficult to find at a reasonable price ( a subjective term I know).

I think phone support should be a policy for every host who charges more than $10.00 a month. I wouldn't deal with any company that doesn't have phone support as I find it a lot easier to describe problems over the phone as opposed to email.\

Just my opinion though......

HostNutt

The worst thing about telephone support to techs is the awkward silence for 10 minutes whilst they solve the problem, it's this reason alone why it should be email forums etc.. ;)

Originally posted by dynamicnet
One of their resellers from Florida (we are in Pennsylvania) who resells for multiple companies stated in a recent face-to-face visit she will use our parent company when she has a client that needs a lot of hand holding; and, will use one of the cheaper companies that offer no telephone support for those that may not need any hand holding. And therein is one of the problems of offering phone support for low-margin plans.

We provide phone support for end-user sofrware we do for a third party. Since the software is proprietary, all the end-users have the support available. The support can be provided economically because only 1 out of dozens of users ever calls for support, so the risk and expense is spread out.

Now that person you are describing only give your parent the support-heavy users and gives the cheap guys all the rest? You get the curds and the cheapies get the cream.

On the comment about people only using it for emergencies....

There are always the people who will call for whatever reason they deem an emergencies. Heck, people in a ticket system abuse the ticket level feature by putting everything an emergency for things like "please reset my password" when in reality, it could easily be done thru their control panel on their own. So having it listed for "emergency only" will definately get it abused by those who dont like to type.

If a company offers phone support, they look more professional to me, and I also feel better since I have another way of contacting them if an emergency arises. Phone service is much more reliable than email in my opinion. IOW, email goes down much more than telephones. Further, if a severe problem arises, I can call and ease my mind immediately!, such as ... 1) why the server is down 2) why they overcharged my Credit Card $100, or 3) see if their phone has been disconnected. This part is about "ease of mind" which I think is important to many customers.

Another important reason for phone support is because often tickets are answered incompletely, or in error, and you have to send multiple emails back and forth. Phone support prevents this. You can follow up in real time.

The bad side to phone support that I have experienced is a tech on the phone that takes his time, and keeps you holding while he does something (who knows), gets off topic, brags, seems tired and non-chalant, doesn't know the answer and transfers you (this happens a lot). And I cannot believe how many phone support techs that I've talked to who don't appear to have a PC in front of them so that they can look at the problem, OR don't seem to be able to navigate their own website, know where things are on their site, or are familiar with changes on their own website.

With the above in mind, I believe that phone support should only be reserved for pre-sales and emergencies; i.e., if they screw up my Credit Card, to me that's an emergency that I want to call about immediately.

I don't care if a company has a toll-free number though. As a matter of fact, I feel strongly that they should NOT have a toll-free number. If a customer has to pay for a call, they'll think twice before calling. I don't mind paying for a call if they are in the USA since I am too. Long-distance calls are cheap these days in the states. I wouldn't want to call a host in Chile, though; and that's one of the reasons I prefer that my host be in the bad ole USA.:)

Perhaps, hosts need to offer different levels of support; or start charging for it with a separate plan such as add phone support for $5 month (limit 5), like some other companies do. Or, $1.00 per call for customers with non-emergencies (and define those non-emergency support issues in the TOS) I know with all the cheap hosts out there, many won't pay; but I think many of the educated webmasters will be more than happy to pay it if you provide good service.

Our company does not offer phone support, but we are considering it. I actually have found intant messaging to be very very useful and I fully intend to continue using this method for customer support.

IMing is a sort of hybrid of the ticket system and the phone. It allows immediate interaction between the client and support, and also allows the copying & pasting of tracerts, ping, whatever.

Personally I would recommend using IMs for cutomer support. We have had a great respose to it.

Originally posted by chrisb
The bad side to phone support that I have experienced is a tech on the phone that takes his time, and keeps you holding while he does something (who knows), gets off topic, brags, seems tired and non-chalant, doesn't know the answer and transfers you (this happens a lot). And I cannot believe how many phone support techs that I've talked to who don't appear to have a PC in front of them so that they can look at the problem, OR don't seem to be able to navigate their own website, know where things are on their site, or are familiar with changes on their own website.All true, but are management problems of the company involved -- just as much as would be extremely slow or incompetant, off-topic answers in a ticket system; or even inadequate network security, error-prone billing, etc. Incompetant, ill-trained techs don't illustrate a problem inherent in or exclusive to phone support; they may just indicate a company you want to stay away from.