My question is how personal is your relationship with your clients when using official means (livehelp/Ticket) I've had a few weird instances that I've questioned

1) I ordered proxy hosting with **** since I do not allow my clients to host proxys on our servers so neither can I.

Because I have a personal relationship with the owner (he and I have been friends for a while) I told him what I'm doing and asked for alittle advice.
I opened my ticket since they setup my account and forgot to setup my dedi ip (no big deal I've done it myself before) One of the support reps then responded something allong the lines of oops it was a mistake your ip is now xxx.xxxx.xxx. I then said the following which really annoyed me

"Hey Andy
We're glad we can cater for your needs and enjoy surfing sites instead of doing school work.
Your IP is: 216.***.****.***

I try not to get too personal but i try to be friendly. You just need to pick a line and don't cross it.

Personally I like it when people remember my name and ask how the service is working out for me, and I think most people do, but I can easily see how you could get offended by that comment. Almost sounds like the host is friends with one of your parents or something.

Thank you Jarrodsl. I agree a 100% I'm not going to move but I am still a customer and I feel it was right of me to demand an appoligie. If he was my rep He may of had a strike against him. (probably not terminated) At any rate that crossed the line. I am a customer and when I am on an official communication I deserve to be treated like one. If he was on msn I'd probably lol but this is not funny

I think it would depend on your personality.

If you can handle the personal relationship with your customers without risking your business, do it. If you're not able to separate friendship from business, then you better keep your distance.

You need to keep in mind that one thing must not affect the other.

In my opinion, be friendly enough, but always formal and professional.

Cheers

Ok I want to know if you think that crossed the line.

Depends I guess, I think if I received that I'd laugh it off and think that was a pretty good joke. As long as they're not trying to be offensive I'd say the tech just was trying to be personable/funny. Sometimes it's hard to tell how people are saying things over the internet without the other components like tone of voice and non-verbal communication so be careful before you assume he was saying it condescendingly:)

nah he was just trying to be friendly i think.. diff people have diff attitude.. dont take everything bad unless it really is.. will give you MUCH less headache if youd just let it go and laugh it off.

I wouldn't say that crossed the line, but, I wouldn't necessarily have replied quite like that myself. It's very hard to judge as obviously we don't know the full story :)

As a customer, a personal reply which indicates they "know" me as a customer and not just as a number is always a good thing.

We refer to all customers by their first name. How else can you offer a personal touch to the hosting, which most communication is done via email, than to at least use their first name.

I think this is a none issue. You were a new customer and they are trying to establish raport with you. You may not like it, but, in my experiance the average end user likes to know, or at least believe (in some cases) that the host thinks of them as a person and not just this number to get a little bit of dough out of.

There are some clients that I have that initiate personal interaction, and some that are all business. I usually respond with warm but to the point responses in both cases, but don't initiate off topic commentary. I may include a "smilie" or something, but unless I knew them rather well and they had a history of being conversationally familiar, I would not have made the above comment about surfing/school.

I doubt there was any ill intent in that statement, but it was inappropriate unless you were already "friends".

In customer relationship, we need to know where to draw the line between friendliness and professionalism. The person that we are dealing with is after all still our client and not our cousin or best friend. Even so, if we portray that degree of professionalism, even our friends will be impressed and will take us seriously in doing business with us.

I am always friendly with everyone and try to put a smile on my face even when I am typing. Because as all good sales book would say, "Your customer can listen and feel the smile in the way you do things."

That's how I do it and that will always be the way I will do it. But it won't be to the extent of knowing their private details. That's going overboard. What I mean by private details here are things like "Why my customer got his/her divorce", or "Client not getting enough *** from his/her partner".

That kinda personal details would be a bit too much in my opinion. Again, these are just my 2 cents worth.

You can use something like that in an in-person or phone conversation, but never online.

It's just too difficult to judge the motivation behind a joke or a "personal touch" response when all you have is a few letters on screen to read.

With an in-person conversation you get to see the facial expressions of the other person.

On the phone you get to hear the tone of the voice.

In both situations you also get the rest of the conversation to back up whatever is said.

Online text, which is only a sentence or two, gives you nothing of the above, and leaves the client's mind wondering (also think how sensitive and insecure a number of people are)... Keep it professional.

I always try to be friendly with clients, it gives that personal touch as i hate the whole machine attitude, tho it does get hard some times

The important thing is to remember that you are running a Business, If you get to friendly, it gives people a path to take advantage of you. You need to treat them as a customer FIRST and a Friend Second.

Think about this : If the account is "Past Due" can you suspend a friend?

The important thing is to remember that you are running a Business, If you get to friendly, it gives people a path to take advantage of you. You need to treat them as a customer FIRST and a Friend Second.

Think about this : If the account is "Past Due" can you suspend a friend?

Although I can see some truth in that statement, I think the inverse is true as well. For instance, if you do give a little bit more time then the customer is more likely to see you as giving them extraordinary service and they may go and write a review or tell a friend. Plus, it'll make them think twice before leaving you for another host.

Here is a better of how our relationship with our clients is - sometime just by saying "Hello" they recognize your voice and who you are. Vice versa. The name of the game 9at least for us) is engagement. We call them up every now and then, say hello, how are things? is everything okay? how was the support on the last ticket? do remember if you have a friends or colleague who needs hosting, do put in a good word for us.

Establishing a relationship is a necessity. Keeping personal and business avenues separate depends on how well you understand the two.

I personally think that was too much. I try and be as professional as possible. I make up for the personal touch in caring for them as a customer. I keep them updated on everything thats going on as much as possible.

I dont have a personal relationship with my clients.

I know all my clients by name. I make more money that way ;)

That's the way we handle it as well. I think it's one thing that separates the smaller hosts from the big guys.