I want to start a discussion on the idea of web hosts outsourcing their customer/technical support.

If you believe that an outsource provider can raise the quality of your support and reduce your costs would this be something that you would consider?

As web hosts do you find it difficult to recruit, hire, employ, and retain a competent tech support staff? I worked my last job as the recruiter for Digiweb, one of the more profitable web hosts to date, and felt the challenge first hand. Problem was, when we finally found a good rep, they were too good for support and we could never afford to pay these people enough for them to stick around.

Is providing quality support a common challenge felt by web hosts?

Yes, (you may have guessed) my company provides outsourced support specifically to web hosts -- but I am not a salesguy - I am trying to find out what concerns / feelings you may have about outsourcing customer support... so?? Interesting idea??


Jeremy Goldman
Dir., Marketing - CyLynx (www.cylynx.com)
jeremy@cylynx.com

Hi Jeremy,

Yes... You see the same problem many of us face every day. It is real simple to find techs, but good ones are way over priced ( but they have the needed skills) and then, when you need them bad - they are off at a party.

I and several other hosts I know of, have gone through the games of sharing techs, finding them, testing them out, then after finding one that is good, they dissapear. 3 to 4 days, then show up and act like that is normal work ethics.

My lead tech for two years decided to open an outsource support site because he saw the need also. Then, after opening the site and getting hosts to work for, landed a 4 to 5 month programming job, and left us all hanging with a big 2 day notice.

But hey.. from the techs I have met in the last year, that is typical behavior. Not good... but typical.

Quality support with techs with that kind of attitude is more than a chalange.

I know there are a ton of small and mid sized hosts out here that need places like that. I think you would do well if you put some hint of expected cost ranges on your site though.

I will look forward to seeing how your company does. It is a good idea, and a need in the hosting community now days.

Good luck with the company.

Tim L

Sounds like an interesting idea.
But hosts differ mainly by support, if I will outsource support I will loose my main attraction.
Hm.

Hello
There is actually someone else about to start offering this: http://www.httpsupport.com/

They are offering an out of hours service which might be useful.

Gordon

Originally posted by Jeremy Goldman
[clip]
I worked my last job as the recruiter for Digiweb, one of the more profitable web hosts to date, and felt the challenge first hand. Problem was, when we finally found a good rep, they were too good for support and we could never afford to pay these people enough for them to stick around. [clip]

Good luck with your model. A high quality outsourcer is valuable indeed. The trick of course is providing service levels that are head and shoulders above anyone else - not just what I could do with a couple of techs. I would hire engineers into the space and pay them very well - skip the tech approach completely. If you can't generate the revenue to pay them, your model is broken.

If you can't find any better support than the guys you had at Digiweb, you will not be successful. Digiweb (now Interliant) has to have some of the worst support on the net. I was with them for 5 years and finally just couldn't handle it any longer. I probably had 50 open requests when I left - and most of the calls I placed were only temporarily patched - never fixed. Problems like file permissions reverting to something I could not even touch (owned by root, no access by anyone else, etc) in my web space every week, that were never, ever fixed. Closed out when someone performed a chown on the file, but never actually fixed.

Again, good luck, and break the paradigm if you want to be successful. Remote support is what most hosts offer today - what with NOCs in one part of the country and support in another. Just paying you to do that is not different enough to be exciting. "Think Different" as my favorite computer company says.

-t

Jeremy,
I cant speak for the Hosting companies, but as an outsourced support company, I can say that with the proper tools and access to Server administrator's, we can provide High quality support to a hosted site.
Most times, ( in my experiance) when a client calls in for a problem, the issue is not actually on the server, but on the site itself. most inhouse support teams have to deal with the small stuff as well as the server side stuff that crops up from day to day.
Outsourcing your support, allows you to sort out the calls and gives you more time to deal with issues that really need your attention instead of walking someone through setting up an email program or configuring their control panel

Certainly most things, even most of the urgent, important or general to specific things can be done remotely. However, I can tell you, one of the NOC's I was recently employed with, was a huge mess and because physical support was poor, I had a lot of client's contact me and ask or demand or panic and ask me what's going on, why their server isn't set up, why the network is having problems, why they didn't get a reboot done in a small amount of time or worse. Things I had no control over, which really sucked.

It sucked, mainly, because it interfered with my job. However, if the company in question does their part and leaves the majority to the remote admin person, things can and do work out fine, but it's just sometimes difficult to also find a company that doesn't make your remote admin job impossible or a real hassle. I'm confident there are plenty of good NOC's and good hosts' out there and I do plenty of remote work for those type's of company's... but it's just as difficult for a good admin to find a good company to do remote work with, as it is fora NOC or host to find a good remote admin.

Simply put, I try and interview the company I work for, before I take the job, just as they do to me, because I hate wasting time with company's that don't have their act together or make me worry that they might screw up and put themselves (and therefore me) out of business and have to look for new company's to provide my services to. However, that's not really that common, in my experience, but it does happen and it does go both ways. I do agree though, provided both entities are qualified and have goo working personalities, that it can work out just fine. I'm just not sure how a company geared to outsourcing is of any advantage, but it might open up some opportunity for some people to get some work, that might not otherwise have gotten it. I suppose only time will tell.

Wow! Thanks for the replies... As a newbie to this message board, I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the level of participation. I will be sure to visit often!

A few things of interest:

1. Tim asked about pricing. I had the pricing on this post previously, but was advised by the moderators (who do an actively good job!) to take it off. Let's just say that for email and chat support you will be saving in the realm of 40-60% of your costs. Voice support depends on volume. Options include per month, per hour, and per incident.


2. The lack of good support at Digiweb (Interliant) - I can attest - is/was not the fault of the support reps themselves, but the challenge Interliant encountered in consuming 13 large Web hosts within the span of 16 months. A lot of queries disappeared in the mix. Additionally, often reps are not empowered enough to fix Tier II+ problems. I am somewhat defensive here because CyLynx was founded by the founder of Digiweb, Mr. Alan Chung - who is a brilliant technologist who understands the importance of excellent customer support. He also knows web hosting like no one else.

3. To solve the problem of making sure we only hire good reps, all of our employees must go through a BATTERY of IQ tests, Computer Science aptitude tests, linguistics tests, web hosting tests, interviews, and evaluations. We hire 8% of applicants!

4. Since we entirely focused on web hosting support, all of our resources are dedicated to delivering superior service. This means better reporting mechanisms, better summaries of problems, better understandings of the top issues and how to solve them, etc... As a 3rd party, we have been well positioned to act in a consultant capacity in addition to a support provider. Also, our support staff LOVES their jobs and are enthusiastic about helping people - something which 90% of tech support dept's lack.


5. Tim G brings up an excellent point that I already mentioned. Support reps are often not given enough access to fix problems at their source and then must rely on bothering NOC guys like yourself who should be doing better things. We have also found this to be a challenge, and our support engineers are constantly seeking higher levels of access to fix problems. Empower your reps people!

6. CyLynx has already conducted the first part of a survey which is measuring the satisfaction levels/expectations of web hosting customers, especially as it relates to support. Initial results have found that key driver to customer satisfaction of web hosting customers is the customer support. If any of you are interested, a press release about the survey can be found at www.cylynx.com/news/.

Thanks,

Jeremy Goldman
CyLynx Technologies
www.cylynx.com

As president of a hosting company, I cant see us outsourcing out tech support.

I think companies would be reluctant to do that because if for some reason the outsourced tech support screws up whos to blame.

I mean for us, we are headed down the MSP road, and thats what our clients are paying for. I like my corporate information staying in house, and could never trust another company to maintain the quality that I feel under my managment support would maintain.

Also if your support is that good, you could easily get a few servers and host them yourselves.

I mean using outsourced companies is just giving your customers away. Eventually someone will pick them up.

If I would even think about outsourcing support, I would want SLA's, Confidentiality agreements, customer agreements, and what it still comes down too, is if the outsourced company screws up. I get blamed, and my client leaves.

The finger is pointed at me, not them. Also adds more security risks in regards to access and what not.

I just think its a bad idea.

Joe

obviously, outsourcing isn't for everyone.

if you already have a competent tech support which is part of your branded image, then of course it makes no sense.

if you are one of the many owner operators, it could definitely work well for you to let someone else handle support, especially if the costs are as low as the numbers mentioned in this thread.

outsourcing is definitely not a new approach, and although i understand your concern, joe, i don't think that losing customers is the main concern if it is done properly. i would be wary of startup outsourcing companies, as it seems like it is a trend everyone who has internet access is trying to jump on, just like webhosting is a form of outsourcing, and we all know the state of the industry now... :)

on a completely unrelated tangent, i believe att outsourcing their CSR's.

the main problem, in my opinion, is that you will become rather dependent on the outsourced company, and the larger you get, the harder it will be to develop your inhouse team. of course, if you did your research right, and are in a good relationship, this becomes a moot point

jeremy, your company sounds like it is taking the right approach, my concern would be how you would get engineers to do tech support for e.mail walkthroughs and the like for that sort of money.

if you don't mind me asking, can you divulge approx. numbers of requests one of your enginners will process relative to a ballpark figure of their salary?

i'm all for outsourcing though, focus on your core competency :)

Joe --

Well said. Glad to have some thesis/anti-thesis going here!

To respond:

1. Because we are in growth phase now, I wouldn't be prone to take customers of an MSP, because I agree that they are paying for superior support in-house. We'll get there though! :)

2. In-house support makes mistakes too, and you are still to blame. Can't avoid that. We just try to eliminate mistakes as much as possible.

3. We have all those SLA's, confidentiality agreements, security measures, etc. We had a nice amount of investment time before going out to market to prepare and foresee the hesitancies and act accordingly.

4. Unlike MSP, virtual platform customers are paying, what, like 20-30 bucks a month? They of course expect support, and we will give them great support. But for a company to provide excellent, fast, quality support and still churn a profit is very challenging. We help mainly with these folks - not generally high paying MSP's, dedicated, or colos (not yet :)

Touche & Best --

Jeremy Goldman
jeremy@cylynx.com
CyLynx.com
Redefining Customer Satisfaction

Jeremy, you said
virtual platform customers, We help mainly with these folks
and
costs somewhere between 1000 and 1200 a month

and I think that's the point:
If you target the big ones: most will do support by their own. If you target the small ones, as you said, very view of the smaller one will pay so much!

I mean I agree with Walter on this.

We are not a huge company by any means, though we are gambling that MSP's are the future so we want to be there.

I just dont feel comforatble.

You said it yourself, the hosting company is still to blame. With that being in mind, outsourcing tech support serves no purpose to me other then adding a extra hop in the scheme of things.

Just like hops in a traceroute arent good, neither are hops in tech support. The more people in the latter, the worse off the customer support is.

I just dont see this helping small or large companies.

Joe

Originally posted by Jeremy Goldman

4. Unlike MSP, virtual platform customers are paying, what, like 20-30 bucks a month? They of course expect support, and we will give them great support. But for a company to provide excellent, fast, quality support and still churn a profit is very challenging. We help mainly with these folks - not generally high paying MSP's, dedicated, or colos (not yet :)



See, I think you overestimate the market :). Right now, our average is about $10 a month. Which means it going to take 100-120 customers just to cover your costs. That's a pretty big chunk.

The other problem I see with this model is the level of access. I am not willing to give root access to our servers to outside techs, which means you will be able to answer the same questions that are answered on our website. That doesn't do us a lot of good, because those aren't the support issues that take up a lot of time. Those are the issues we have templates made up for already :).

Before switching to web hosting only, we offered DSL and Dial Up access. Outsourcing made sense for those services, because it was largely end-user driven, and didn't require server access.

For web hosting, I'm not sure where the benefit lies.

[Dennis Miller]
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong
[/Dennis Miller]

Sounds like a good idea but don't think it will fly well.

As mentioned about there's the liability issue. Also, the simply fact is out sourcing doesn't produce the same kind of quality you can do for yourself (or you can demand for your own company). IOW, you loose control and with reputation so important in the hosting industry one incident can go a long way towards ruinning your reputation.

"Control is not lost in an outsourcing relationship; only the means of control has changed."
- Peter Bendor-Samuel, Turning Lead Into Gold

Outsourcing as a trend is inevitable. It is interesting to hear criticism of outsourcing from web hosts - when the web hosting business itself is outsourcing! Those that have said it doesn't work are in many ways incorrect because we currently support several large and medium hosts very nicely. We have effectively raised customer satisfaction levels with better support!

Walter: To a large degree you are correct, which is why mid-sized companies with 10-40 support reps are ideal. That said, the 1000 / month per rep price is an extremely low price to pay for a full time employee - either as a supplement or as a replacement.

JBiz: I appreciate your persistence - it helps my job a lot to hear counter arguments. Still, like you proposed, it comes down to engineering. We have found a model (can anyone figure this one out? It has not yet been said) that allows us to provide better qualified support engineers at 60% of the cost to do so in-house (with salaries, benefits, training, equipment, etc). If we can raise the quality of a company's support services and dramatically reduce costs, then where is the question? Obviously -- with quality... which leads me to -

Jaiem: (who said) "Also, the simply fact is out sourcing doesn't produce the same kind of quality you can do for yourself" -- Therefore, every company should host their own web sites because clearly they can do it at a higher quality. I should also do my own dry cleaning, write my own press releases, and as WorldCom ads suggest - do my own brain surgery? I disagree with the very essence of a statement like this on quality. Believe it or not, the questions that arise from host to host are mostly (nice alliteration, eh?) the same. Once we hammer out the differences and train accordingly, we can provide higher quality support! Or at minimum, we are ABLE to provide higher quality support.

uualan: The essence of your argument comes down to trust. You are correct, in order for outsourced support to be beneficial, a level of trust will need to be fostered between us and our allies. When dealing with our clients, we never say "ok, tomorrow we will take over all of your support". Rather, we ramp up slowly - one, two reps to begin with and then add more as trust develops. Therefore, control is maintained. Also, as I have mentioned, as trust develops our clients are more likely to give "outside techs" root access to handle problems at their core. Why not? You will know their names, be able to speak with them whenever you need to, etc -- In this virtual world of ours, why should location of the rep matter? And trust me, we have two departments - Quality Control and Quality Assurance - with checks and balances, that can indeed demand as high a quality of support as you do inhouse. Addtionally, templated answers and links to FAQ's really don't please customers. If retention is important, you should remember that people crave personalized attention.

Thanks for everyone's input. I am eager to hear more responses and ideas!

Best -

Jeremy Goldman
CyLynx.com

Well said, Jeremy

Originally posted by Jeremy Goldman

uuallan: The essence of your argument comes down to trust. You are correct, in order for outsourced support to be beneficial, a level of trust will need to be fostered between us and our allies. When dealing with our clients, we never say "ok, tomorrow we will take over all of your support". Rather, we ramp up slowly - one, two reps to begin with and then add more as trust develops. Therefore, control is maintained. Also, as I have mentioned, as trust develops our clients are more likely to give "outside techs" root access to handle problems at their core. Why not? You will know their names, be able to speak with them whenever you need to, etc -- In this virtual world of ours, why should location of the rep matter? And trust me, we have two departments - Quality Control and Quality Assurance - with checks and balances, that can indeed demand as high a quality of support as you do inhouse. Additionally, templated answers and links to FAQ's really don't please customers. If retention is important, you should remember that people crave personalized attention.

You make some persuasive arguments, and I sincerely hope you will do well. However, from my perspective, you still have not convinced me that we would get any benefits from outsourcing support.

For a couple of reasons:

1. You talk about trust. Say we develop this great relationship with your support reps, and everything is humming along nicely. One of your support reps becomes disgruntled and quits, before we find out he is gone, he logs into our servers and deletes all the accounts and changes the root password. Its an extreme example, but not unheard of. At least if one of our tech support people becomes disgruntled and quits I can change the passwords before they can cause any damage :).

2. If your support people are handing more advanced issues and a customer requests a special perl module to be installed. Your tech, being willing to please, installs the module, without asking us. Customer is happy, but we haven't had the chance to test the module to make sure it is something we want installed. The tech also does not install the module on all servers. Now, if we move the client from one shared server to another, that module will not be on the server, because it is not part of our standard install.

A perfect example: we are having problems right now with our current web log program and sites with heavy traffic loads. I am investigating other programs we can use in place of the current program. This will involve a couple of weeks of program tweaking and the testing of other programs. The last thing I would want is someone who is not one of our developers testing these types of programs out.

3. As far as templates go. Why wouldn't you use templates for the questions that get asked all the time? How customized can you make the answer to: What is my path to perl? or Where can I see my traffic stats? It seems a waste of manpower to custom answer those questions. And website FAQs are very useful. Those same questions can be answered even faster by visiting our website FAQ section :D.

I guess the reason I don't see this as a viable alternative for us, is that I don't see that your reps can handle issues any more efficiently than we can, and if we were to sign up for your service I would either need to hire someone, or have someone spend valuable time reviewing your tickets everyday to make sure issues were handled to our satisfaction.

I don't know, maybe when we reach 10,000 clients I will feel differently. However, if your target market is web hosts that are that size, you will be hard pressed to find clients :).

Again, I wish you luck...but I don't see how the model works for us.

I'm sorry Jeremy, but I wasn't thrilled with support when Alan was in complete control of Digiweb. It did not go to pot only when Interliant took over. It got worse, but it was not stellar from the start.

Outsourced support may have a bright future, but not if you don't do it differently than you did the first 3 years at Digiweb. The support was not why I stayed. It was ultimately why I left however.

I would not do business with Mr Chung agian by choice. I'm glad you identified him as the principal behind CyLynx.com so I'll know to stay away.

Bad service will always haunt you. I would be very leary of turning my company's reputation over to anyone else without serious research, serious customer interviews, and financial guarantees that when my customers bailed out because you did not fulfill an obligation, I was compensated accordingly.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. You can almost never recover from a bad customer experience.

Take VDI's current condition as an example. This little hiccup will be haunting them for months. They may loose a significant amount of business over it, and yet they have certainly done everything they can to get things back on track as quickly as possible. There are a significant number of hosting companies that are hurting now over this. How many will leave VDI in the next 6 months? Half? Three quarters? How many will bail the next time something like this happens? Significant numbers I suspect.

Support - or poor support if you will - will kill a company faster than anything. I wish you well in your new endeavor, however pontification will not convince me that your way is better.

-t

My word, this is addictive! (and fun)

uualan: "I guess the reason I don't see this as a viable alternative for us, is that I don't see that your reps can handle issues any more efficiently than we can" -- OK, but if we can do it just as good at a *fraction* of the cost, then there is something to discuss here. Our employees are extremely happy with their jobs and salaries. Details of other quality, control, and security concerns can be found on our web site at www.cylynx.com/qcs/.

thewitt: First, I apologize for any bad experiences you may have had. That said, your exact predicament is the primary reason that Alan got out of straight web hosting and into building an organization that could be 100% support-centric. Bad web hosting support happens across the board, not just at Digiweb. (Just read through the posts at this and other forums!) I was there - Like I said at the beginning of this forum, at Digiweb we/I had major difficulties hiring enough IT-savvy, intelligent, reliable support staff and still be profitable. Now, with CyLynx, every aspect of the organization can be focused on service delivery and superior support services. We plan on keeping it that way. And about the first impression thing - not much I can do there, but say that we are a new organization with a new mission.

Best -
Jeremy Goldman
jeremy@cylynx.com
CyLynx

I think that although there are viable and valid concerns from web hosts and NOC's that need support to be wary (Giving people access they might abuse later, take away customers, bad mouth a company and have intimate knowledge of the systems that they are given so much access to, and so one), there are other concerns too, for the person being outsourced.

This doesn't provide a long term or stable work environment for the employee, depending on what opens up or not, and gives that employee less of a chance to get as familiar with those people they work for. Obviously it's better to have a stable contract with one company and that they are fully familiar and have the access they need, not something new every week or so. So, there are many drawbacks to both sides, but there are also a lot of company's that need very short term help, assistance, trouble shooting, installing, securing, configuring,... or whatever, or just someone to pick up the load for a short time.

So, it can be a valid option and no matter whom you hire, there's always a risk, but this does greater the risks. I've done small work, or just helped out a lot of company's (too many to count) and I can see this as being an option for them, but these company's also knew of me, about me, or just knew me from a history of interaction with them, offering my suggestions, assistance or about anything else. So, that too is also different. There are a lot of pros and cons, but it's still a higher risk in many aspects, for both sides of this.

I haven't really looked, read about or paid much attention to how your company is involved in outsourcing, but I assume they get a profit and the wages, depending on the hours involved, might seem a bit too cheap, and therefore will likely cater to more of the younger, inexperienced crowd -- not to say that's going to happen, nor that I'm that old myself, but there are a lot of variables and it's just too difficult to say if it's a good idea or not, outright anyway.

It seems like a good idea on paper but implimenting it may be a whole different story. The biggest drawback I would see is even if you do find a hosting company willing to give your techs access to their servers, in order for your techs to answer inquiries correctly they would have to be knowledgeable in every Control Panel and System config out there. Otherwise they would be limited to general questions and answers. For Example. We use the ENSIM CP's on our servers. A customer submits a support inquiry regarding how to change the Web Stats layout and info on their CP. You may or may not be able to answer this question for them, but you can see my point, without knowing every possible server configuration and Control Panel it seems difficult to accomplish this.

This is just my opinion of course.

I think I found the key issue that keeps looping, but hasn't been outright said by anyone.

You need different levels of support, depending on the hosts needs. Some will issue root access, some will want just basic support, and major issues sent to the host company, and others will want full support, while another may just need a part time admin to do advanced things to his servers that he has not yet learned how to do.

A lot of you are saying "IF" they find hosts that will use them. Shoot... when my tech started outsourcing for other hosts, he had so many emailing him he couldn't hire help fast enough.

There is defanately a need. Sure, the need will be diferent for each host. Perhaps CyLynx is set up to help in different levels of need... that hasn't really been addressed.

The price listed... 1000 to 1200 a month... but what level is that for,, that is a guestamate without knowing how many tickets are being sent in per month.

I will most likely call to get a better idea of things, because I am sure they can't disclose everything on a board like this. but it is interesting to see the different views on the matter.

I think if CyLynx keeps good techs that don't talk down or be short with the customers with the really novice questions... ie; .. what is FTP ? or .. I paid for hosting.. but where is my website?... ( true questions asked)

Some hosts take the newbies, and help them personally even before telling them to use the support address.. I do, and that little extra help goes a long ways.

so, I guess I am just saying, I have no doubt they will do well, just I think they need to custom taylor each hosts cost to the level of support issued... or asked for.


good luck Jeremy,

Tim L

True, and remember there's also a great potential for a few positive aspects as well. Such as, so-many people that outsource their talents, will become known for either having a good or bad reputation, good or bad responses, knowledge and the like. If this person works on many hosts and does a good job, then other hosts are likely to trust the person more too, get to know enough about them to feel comfortable hiring that person to be outsourced, etc. As long as it doesn't favor friends or something (which some site's do), then it could be a good way of finding out if someone's qualified to the point where the company doesn't have to wonder if it's a bad choice or not.

Jeremy - By that thinking car makers should sell cars directly and never have dealerships. But we know that isn't so.

All I'm saying is that when you decompose your business into outsourcing parts you loose control and inevitably quality suffers.

Outsourcing is the castle of the "virtual business". That's the idea you can contract with one company to take your orders, another to process the payments, a third to ship, etc etc and you're just a coordinator in the middle. Looks great on paper but rarely works out nearly half as well.

For some very large hosts it will probably be done. But most hosts are much smaller and I think will keep support inhouse at least in the forseeable future.

i think the problem is that with small web hosts, who resell, colocate, or rent dedicated managed servers, their core competency is support.

for those, it makes no sense to outsource, what else what they do then? :)

but for the companies whose owners are the main techs or who are marketing wizards, or etc... who are not so great at tech support (there are plenty of those companies out there, can we agree on that? :) ), this would be a great opporunity.

I feel this would work out great for mid sized companies and larger ones.

Hell almost none of the larger isp's and computer makers don't do their own support anymore. I know for a fact Del, HP, MSN, EArthlink, SWBell, Pacbell, Roadrunner, FileMaker, Hitachi, MPower, Compaq, Prodigy, Microsoft, and some more I can't remember right now, outsource all their Teir 1 tech support and alot of their teir 2 tech support.

The great thing about outsourcing is that you can make all kinds of performance stipulations in the contract. Like all emails must be answered within a certain period of time or there will be penelties. I wouldn't sign a contract with an outsourcing company without one of these type contracts. I also would never sign a contract with them without visiting them on site to check out the operation and meet the managers.

But if resonable contract gaurantees could be met and the onsite operations look good, I see no reason why outsourcing level 1 support would be a problem for anyone.

I think one of the reasons alot of people can't see themselves doing this is because many of us here would rather sit in front of our PC all day and do it ourselves then to trust someone to do it for us.

But the problem is, I like to take week long vacations without so much as a phone or computer. This is where outsourcing would come in great.

Thank you, Jeremy! (nice name) :D

What you said speaks very true.

In "Turning Lead into Gold: The Demystification of Outsourcing", Peter Bendor-Samuel writes:

"(In an outsourcing relationship,) the buyer exchanges its ability to dictate how the process will be performed for the ability to define the results and hold the supplier accountable for them."

If the outsourcing agreement is structured properly, the supplier's control will generate value for both parties.

We are allies with our web hosts, fighting for the same cause - the customers' satisfaction.

Thanks,

Jeremy Goldman
CyLynx Technologies
Redefining Customer Satisfaction
www.cylynx.com

One of the Quality control aspects that we offer to clients is the ability to remotely monitor calls thru a CM-30 system. The client dials into the system and monitors the call.. this gives the ability to determine the level of support with out the "tech" knowing. It ensures that a customer gets the best possible support. Aside from the remote monitoring available to a client we do random recording of technicians calls and make the files available to a client through download.
Service level agreements are usually one way to guarentee service. Ie 85% of calls answered in the first 60 seconds.

Monitoring the service levels is easy enough to do through the call tracking system's employed by most center's.


A good support company should also provide the client records for each call, through a variety of methods. Either thru a direct connection to the database employed, or spreadsheets with a break down of calls and types.

As far as Root access goes, This is something that I would not want in a techs hands no matter how much experiance he has. Level one support generally determines whether the issue is client side or server side. If Client side then the Tech would help to resolve the issue. If server side the Issue is escalated to a tier 2 level. If the 1st line tech has the ability to contact tier 2 directly, then quality of service need not suffer.
Poor service resulting from a lack of communication between levels is where most outsourced support fails.

Most hosts, have webbased tools at their disposal. It is simple enuff to add a new user to access, either thru IP or even a new user name and password. Shutting off access.. is then very simple. Anything that requires root should be done at the hosting level anyway, whether it is adding a database for cold fusion to the server or installing modules on a unix based server.

Well, I personally have never done just tech support, it has always just been a part of being a system administrator. What kind of tech support you're talking about, is what depends on the access needed. If you want tech support to just offer the obvious answers that require no access, or you have a web based or other type of control panel someone can just type in (or paste in) information, then they are a pretty useless employee anyway -- and why would you need them at all?

Tech support sometimes do need access to fix a problem. I guess you're talking about very low level of support, but if that's the case, then that sort of support is best left to FAQ and Documentation pages, and saving money from hiring such a helper anyway. I think this outsourcing idea was more so about having people outsourced to a company, for whatever help they need. Most web hosts aren't owned by someone that knows what they are doing at all, let alone much of anything if they actually do know even a small amount, and they need help and they also don't have the money to hire or keep an employee on full time -- yet they still need someone qualified to assist them in various aspects.

It's better to give root to those type of people (outsourced people), than to try and let some web host owner attempt to follow directions (or even try and guess) of how to fix a problem or install something and screw everything up. However, it is also true though, that a lot of tech support people are basically pretty clueless as well. But, you shouldn't assume that will be or should be a problem for most or all or any web hosts that will possibly need such assistance.

Again, though, it's a valid issue about records of tech calls and whatnot, as well as logs of other such similar aspects. And again, it depends on the type of tech support person you're talking about. But I guess if they were what you considered (and wanted) to be beyond tech support and more involved, they'd be more of a system administrator at that point anyway, correct?

I think I really need to look into outsourcing my support because I'm just too busy. I am hosting over 400 web sites through an Alabanza server. I also study fulltime at university.

I have noticed that the level of service that customers used to get has dropped. My email box always has support requests in it.

I want to continue growing my business but I don't want the service level to drop. I want all my customers to get the best service they can. They all love the control panel but need answers to all their questions. I have a 200 page support with tutorials etc.

I am either going to go with this outsourcing support or install wonderdesk utilising the support ticket and knowledgebase functions.

All I need then is someone here during business hours to answer the phone for sales questions and convert support to email for the support department to answer.

I think too many of you are stressing over this outsourcing idea. I think outsourcing is a great idea and allows any business to grow with demand. Afterall, I outsource my server requirements and my credit card facilities and it seems to work quite well.

Let me tell ya... I talked to a rep at cylynx today, and I was impressed! They answered all of my questions great, and unlike all the other outsourcing places I've talked too, they actually gave me a price! :) wow!

As far as outsourcing goes, it really does depend on a lot of factors. As I have heard, a lot of you probably won't need it. For many though, and myself, it may become a necessity. I will not be around NEARLY as often as I am now in a few months, and I'm looking to outsource my support. Cylynx is one of the options. Heck, IntraHost is a small (but growing) company. Right now we probably can't afford them, but in 3 months I expect to be able to.

In out phone conversation, I was told that I could actually login and view all the support tickets that were done or being done and what not. See exactly what a tech said, or what he did. If you choose the live chat option, you can view all the live chats going on in real time. If a tech says something wrong and you want to correct it, you can actually intercept the call, or break in and start talking with the client. You can even do your own support using the Cylynx system! So for you control freaks that can't get enough of support, you can still support your clients!

I'm looking forward to outsourcing my support. I know they will do better then I can an this point in time. For me personally its the money issue. We really aren't a big company. We actually started to make a profit (monthly) just a few months ago. Its a tough business, but we're still alive, and we hope to grow with outsourced support.

I'm sold, now if they only had a "Free" version, haha!

I would think that outsourcing would benefit many companies (clearly not all) as long as clear, effective quality assurance and performance measures were implemented to ensure the hosting company could hold the outsourcing partner accountable. Course some clear competition would also be a help (no offense CyLynx). One of the factors that keeps customer support paramount in web hosts minds (aside from the desire to provide a good service) is that we know if we fail to deliver the required level of service there are many companies out there who would love to provide it.

This may not be a solution for the majority of hosts but I'd bet it will clearly fill a niche. Just my 2 cents!

The web hosting companies that are using Cylynx are right now wishing they hadn't decided to outsource with them. It seems the well trained staff Cylynx had walked out or were fired (depends on who you talk to). The people that are now handling the tech support calls for the web hosting companies are un-trained in Web Hosting. They know dialup.

My best friend works for one of the hosting companies. He indicated to me that cancellations are on the rise and the that the increase is totally attributed to the poor support group at Cylynx. No one can understand the techs who are rude, know not what they are doing and lie to the customers.

His company gave Cylynx a deadline to get their act together. The time came and Cylynx was no closer to being reliable. Even the phone lines were constantly going down. So, his company is looking to bring the jobs back to the US. Smart move I think considering Cylynx is understaffed with less than adequate people.