Anyone here offering a 1 hour (or similar) guarantee on support ticket turnaround? What/how do you offer to compensate your clients if you can't meet it? I'm thinking of offering something similar and want to see how y'all handle it.

Why offer it -- instead just have exceptional support around the clock.
Don't put yourself in a precarious situation where you may suddenly have to offer less-than-quality responses to meet quotas.

Seems silly to me, perhaps I'm in an alternate market.

Well I know I've been with my share of companies that take many hours if not days to respond to tickets. As a prospective customer, I may be more likely to sign up with a company that offerred such a guarantee. Of course the quality of support has to be there, but being able to quickly respond to queries and to guarantee that response time could be an attractive incentive when decising on a new hosting company. It may be more trouble than it's worth though, which is why I'm hoping to find some who are offering something similar currently.

Just to clarify, are you asking about a response or a resolution to a trouble ticket?

Well it would have to be a response, since there are some complex problems that couldn't be resolved within an hour.

Well, in that case I don't see any harm in having a 1 hour response guarantee.

Of course, anything high priority / urgent would require a faster response time... but for most (normal priority) tickets a maximum 1 hour response is OK.

Well depending on how busy you are and how your ticket system works you can do many things like this. I would have to agree up front as a response would be a good idea but resolution not.

Here are some SLA thngs to think about.

Have more than one support department for different area's of your business. Some areas of a business require more attention than others. So different support areas can have different SLA response times attached.

Also priority of a ticket should way the response time. I mean if the same user fogot there password 10 times last month and they keep submiting new tickets as high priority change the priority level and let them know that it should not be high unless there is a real reason on why it should be if not place it as low and place the response times accordingly.

Just some things to think about.

Examples are if you offer reseller accounts make sure they have quick response times to medium and high priority tickets as they have customers that are probably waiting for the response. If you make them look good you look good right and you may be able to upsell them later with a VPS or dedicated server.

I'm of two minds about this.

One one hand I think that a response is pretty useless if it's just a 'got your ticket!' type of thing. We're all used to those automated responses and I think that you would be hard pressed to generate some sort of 'got your ticket' response that actually sounded like it was from a human being and not another automated one.

On the other hand, as a customer, my biggest pet peeve is not knowing if someone is working on my ticket or not. I don't care if something takes hours to fix as long as I know that somebody somewhere is working on it.

I guess that would be the magic combination for me, then. A quick response that is obviously from a human who is looking at my problem. That would be ideal.

I'm of two minds about this.

One one hand I think that a response is pretty useless if it's just a 'got your ticket!' type of thing. We're all used to those automated responses and I think that you would be hard pressed to generate some sort of 'got your ticket' response that actually sounded like it was from a human being and not another automated one.

On the other hand, as a customer, my biggest pet peeve is not knowing if someone is working on my ticket or not. I don't care if something takes hours to fix as long as I know that somebody somewhere is working on it.

I guess that would be the magic combination for me, then. A quick response that is obviously from a human who is looking at my problem. That would be ideal.

I agree with your points. Our ticketing system (like all ticketing systems) has an auto-responder, so the customer gets an immediate response that their ticket has been received. That doesn't count. Like you, I hate it when I submit a ticket and get just an auto-responder and nothing else for hours or days. Just a simple "We're working on your issue", will set my mind at ease (for a little while anyway) and at least makes me feel like something is happening.

The easiest way to get around compensation is to actually do what you guarantee. Forward the support emails to your cell and have it on 24 hours a day.

Otherwise, if it were me I wouldnt offer a 1 hour if I had doubts about how long it would take me to respond.

If a problem takes longer than an hour to fix, any reasonable clients will understand.

I agree with your points. Our ticketing system (like all ticketing systems) has an auto-responder, so the customer gets an immediate response that their ticket has been received. That doesn't count. Like you, I hate it when I submit a ticket and get just an auto-responder and nothing else for hours or days. Just a simple "We're working on your issue", will set my mind at ease (for a little while anyway) and at least makes me feel like something is happening.

I like the idea of a 1 hour response guarantee - but the hardest part is what do you do to compensate when it doesn't happen.

I think I'd be looking at something like a 10% credit on the next month's bill each time it doesn't happen.

I'd be afraid of clients submitting trivial tickets in an effort to catch you offguard, it's a good measure to make sure you're on your feet, but with a few el cheapo clients, it could produce more tickets.

Yep, I agree with Nick. Some clients would abuse the guarantee, and create more load on your helpdesk, and put more pressure on the 1 hour guarantee.

It's a good marketing hook though, as fast and helpful tech support is a hot button in hosting.

I host I used a few years ago offered this.

They ended up with an autoresponder to tickets and then claimed it was answered. Needless to say I didn't hang around too much longer.

lol, an autoresponder is seriously lame as a response. It's hard to believe some hosts could think their clients are that stupid. :rolleyes:

Most outsourced companies seem to be offering a 1 hour reply with 6 hours max resolution. Not sure if all of them abide by that though

Most outsourced companies seem to be offering a 1 hour reply with 6 hours max resolution. Not sure if all of them abide by that though

A few years ago, I used to outsource support.. About 40% of the time, they actually responded within the guaranteed time frame. The most ridiculous thing was, there was no compensation if they missed the guarantee. No credit, no apology... nothing. I tried 2 different companies, both could never do it.. Ended up hiring my own staff and never looked back to outsourcing... It is all a marketing gimmick..

Set up automatic/confirmation reply. You get 1 minute guaranteed response! :D

Yep, I agree with Nick. Some clients would abuse the guarantee, and create more load on your helpdesk, and put more pressure on the 1 hour guarantee.

It's a good marketing hook though, as fast and helpful tech support is a hot button in hosting.
I never thought that the abuse, but of course you're right. People behave very strangely when it comes to support.

For example. I didn't bother to build in any checks into an order form one (like checks to see if any of the fields were filled out). I figured, who cares if a few blank ones get through? Weirdly enough, it seems that many people who hit the site would do exactly that - hit the submit button without filling anything out.

I still can't figure out why so many people would bother to do that. Seems like such strange behaviour. But since so many people do it, it seems logical to me that many would also take advantage of a support guarantee like that.

I offer a 2 hour SLA guarantee as an optional "upgrade".

It's a popular choice for some of our larger corporate clients.

But.. they pay through the nose for it. The price depends on their account, but the minimum for this upgrade is $200/month.

(In other words, it's enough to cover the cost of having one helpdesk tech on-call 24/7, just for these customers.)

mrzippy,

Do you outsource your helpdesk? And if so, any recomendations on who is good and bad in this space?

Thanks!

I use a "two-tier" approach for our helpdesk.

I have several full-time staff who work the desk as front-line support. If they can't handle the ticket, then it is escalated to the server admins to resolve.

In the case of the customers who have upgraded to a 24x7 support SLA/guarantee, they are provided with both a personalized phone number (unique to their account) and a login to a different helpdesk. Tickets submitted into the special helpdesk are sent via SMS directly to whomever is on-call at the moment.

That helpdesk also has special automated escalation procedures just in case the tech doesn't reply within 15 minutes. After 15 minutes without a response, I am paged, and so are all the other techs who are working the shift. After 30 minutes without a response, all the helpdesk techs I employ are paged.

Most outsourced companies seem to be offering a 1 hour reply with 6 hours max resolution. Not sure if all of them abide by that though

In addition to our own in-house staff, we've been using Logic Support (www.logicsupport.com (http://www.logicsupport.com)) to handle client tickets (mainly outwith standard office hours). They offer and indeed surpass the 1 hour response rate with most (although obviously not all) issues fully resolved in this time.

On the original issue though, I have to agree with David - don't simply "offer" a 1 hour response rate etc, anyone can do that. Just actually provide a first class service in the first place.

Gary

Thanks for the info. Sounds like you all have it ironed out.

At the moment, we're providing 60-minute response, but only from 8-8 our local time. I'm 100% sold on the 60-minute response because as a customer of many hosting companies myself, I know that nothing drives me up the wall faster than my support ticket sitting there with no indication whether anyone has read it or is aware of it.

However, I'd like to extend that response time to 24-hour, but just don't have the infrastructure yet. Hence why I am interested in what others are doing.

Thanks!

Jon

I was going to suggest that. Within normal business hours (roughly) offer a 60 minute SLA on a response for calls/message/tickets etc... Outside of those hours its best effort/24 hours/next business day. Though emergency faults and service issues deserve their own exception. Maybe a 30 min SLA?

It's good if you are a new company and as a selling point, however when the company get mature, I don't think you will need such to attract clients, at least that our personal experience ;)

Yes, I agree that we're burning the candle at both ends right now in order to attract new clients. Once we have a steady stream we'll definitely go to 24/7 support, but then we'll actually have the money to do so :)

Most companies already offering this just respond with something like "Looking into it". They don't have to actually do anything yet, but you think they are.

I like the idea of offering it truely during your local times, and a more cushoned times after hours. Can't ALWAYS be there to respond to it, quite frankley you'd have to have employes, or a zombie like person who sit there day and night o.O

I think from customer' point of view, as long as they KNOW by when you'll reply is good enough. Whether it's 1hour or 2h or 3 makes no difference (I think) as long as their EXEPCTATIONS are met.

So, don't get yourself into such commitment of being available 24/7 (especially if you're a single trader). If you do you'll forever be a self employed person and never a business owner (there is a difference).

I think from customer' point of view, as long as they KNOW by when you'll reply is good enough. Whether it's 1hour or 2h or 3 makes no difference (I think) as long as their EXEPCTATIONS are met.
I totally agree. It's all about managing expectations and then meeting them.

To that end, we offer 60-minute support response between 8am and 8pm our local time only. We don't promise a resolution, but our customers definitely get a response (not an auto responder) from a real live person within 60 minutes between 8am and 8pm. That goes a long way to letting customers know that someone is alive at the wheel.

We could offer 24/7 support but that - as you state - would relegate me/us to helpdesk staff rather than business builders. Plus we realize that we aren't able to do 24/7 well so we're not even going to try right now.

Having said that, we do have an extended SLA offering for 24/7 support however it costs enough that we can actually provide 24/7 support properly for those customers who want it. Most don't, however. Probably because of the price :)

I think from customer' point of view, as long as they KNOW by when you'll reply is good enough. Whether it's 1hour or 2h or 3 makes no difference (I think) as long as their EXEPCTATIONS are met.

So, don't get yourself into such commitment of being available 24/7 (especially if you're a single trader). If you do you'll forever be a self employed person and never a business owner (there is a difference).
Completely agree!

Be sure to provide solution as fast as you can if, possible then in minutes. Some ppl think if, you reply to your customer queries in minutes that's mean you are completely free and nothing to do but I don't agree with this. It shows how serious you are in your efforts to provide best service and your customer will really appriciate this.

This is my personal experience. Don't gurantee anything but provide the best.

1 Hour is a max for most reputable companies , and the resolution all depends on the difficulty of the issue, i can't see you having any problem finding a 1 hour response time for support.

A few years ago, I used to outsource support.. About 40% of the time, they actually responded within the guaranteed time frame. The most ridiculous thing was, there was no compensation if they missed the guarantee. No credit, no apology... nothing. I tried 2 different companies, both could never do it.. Ended up hiring my own staff and never looked back to outsourcing... It is all a marketing gimmick..

Sorry to hear about your past experience.

But personally IMO most of the times in such cases, it depends on the package that the host purchases from the outsourcing company. The factor responsible behind this concept is simple, the most cheap package shares the tech which delays the response and resolution time... pay more, go for dedicated support, and you will find that your support is not overburdened and performs well below your promised limits.

Not trying to promote ourselves, but this is the reason, we offer approximate response time with our lowest plan (shared techs) and offer guaranteed response time with our higher plans (dedicated and semi-dedicated techs).

Just trying to explain the concept which may have caused misunderstanding..

1 hour or less response times should be standard with any serious hosting company. What is more important is the quality of that response.

Tech Support that can close a ticket in a few hours with 2 responses is a heck of a lot better than Tech Support that responds every 15 mins but takes 12 hours to fix the problem.

Tech Support that can close a ticket in a few hours with 2 responses is a heck of a lot better than Tech Support that responds every 15 mins but takes 12 hours to fix the problem.

I agree totally! It's about RESOLUTION not response.

1 hour or less response times should be standard with any serious hosting company.

Gee my local ER doesn't respond in 1hour or less. Website problem is not life or death for gods sake, I feel like we set the standards too high!

While I agree that meaningless responses are a waste of time, I know as a customer that there's nothing more frustrating that opening a ticket for some important issue and then watch it go to 15 minutes, 45 minutes, over an hour without any indication that anyone has received your ticket and is working on it.

Case in point - I have a support ticket at License Hut that has been open for 18 hours now there's no indication that anyone has even looked at it. Frustrating as hell.

That's the reason behind our response guarantee. While we may not be able to fix whatever your problem is in under and hour, you will know for sure that someone is at least aware of it and not sleeping on the keyboard while your business goes down the tubes.

That's just one of the many things that bugged me as a hosting customer that I've decided to fix in my own hosting company.

Gee my local ER doesn't respond in 1hour or less. Website problem is not life or death for gods sake, I feel like we set the standards too high!


Are you serious? How long do you have to wait if lets say, God forbid you have a heart attack for someone to show up?

I knew New Zealand is a sparsely populated nation but your ER/Ambulance response can't be that slow, can it? :eek:

-Sean

Some clients prefer knowing their ticket has been seen within the hour. Communication is key, it's assuring for the client to recieve responses when you've seen the ticket, started working on it and finished it.

Are you serious? How long do you have to wait if lets say, God forbid you have a heart attack for someone to show up?


Hehe well, the ambulance responds fast, but then in ER you gotta wait for hours unless you're literally dying. My pet on the other hand, will not get to single emergency vet clinic at the other end of town if he's to have a heart attack :)
But the 'serious' hosting company will be there to respond to 'urgent' situations within 15minutes

imho, companies can offer guarantees to reply within an hour with compensation. The quality of the response is what counts. We also have a target to respond to any support queries in half hour. We can not guarantee that happens 100% of the time due to the volume of tickets that are waiting for responses. I think the only way to know for sure is to try a company out.. most have money back guarantees if you are not satisfied. What do you have to lose...

Companies that do offer a guarantee with compensation usually have tricks up their sleeves like "guaranteed response within 1 hour" and not "guaranteed resolution within 1 hour" big difference. I understand that not all can be resolved within 1 hour, but is the techie actually looking into your problem or just lets you know that you are number 66 in line.

Best way is to try a company that guarantees $$ back. Nothing is black and white in this industry.. just have to keep trying till you find your best hosting company.

my 2 cents/

We respond to most issues in less than an hour, but some occasionally slip through (during peak times, holidays when we have fewer staff on, etc). It'd be foolish for us to offer this guarantee just to occasionally miss it.

Obviously, different types of clients have different service level expectations, and these are usually stated in an SLA. We're targetting the low cost end of the market, who are perfectly happy with the speed of support they receive.