this is basically a rant, but why are soo many hosts, most of which resellers using bobcares for tech support. I wouldnt mind outside tech if they understood english, but i find myself re-submitting tickets upwards of 8 times, with each ticket simply being a re-wording of the previous, in hopes that the tech might understand what is wrong.

Are you saying you use BobCares? Or that your provider does?

Im with McHost and they do. It truely is horrible. McHost has been stating that they will have their own in house phone techs, however this promise has been un-kept for about 2 months now. I just cant see why hosts would use bobcares. Expenses might come down, but support from them is horrible.

Originally posted by flamesburn
I just cant see why hosts would use bobcares....
They are cheaper than staff.

i realize they are cheaper...but what is the point in trying to brand your company as high quality and then provide support like this. It really has downgraded my opinion of MCHost. I mean their service for hosting is amazing, however the fact that marc chooses to continue to use bobcares even after soo many complaints really is dumb.

It's Marc's business and he makes the call. He makes that decision based upon what he thinks is best for the business. I personally wouldn't outsource support. We prefer to handle support inhouse. It costs more, but you deliver a better product.

what is bobcares?

An company where web hosts can outsource their support to. As mentioned before it is cheaper, and usually leads to faster response times, but the labguage barrier and techs unfamiliar with the hosts software/server can lead to problems.

www.bobcares.com

I guess bob doesn't care :D

Originally posted by mySportsHost
the labguage barrier . . .can lead to problems.

Yep, it sure can. :D

The problem isnt that bob doesnt care, its that bobs name is really Kumar or Sharma and he hasn't really ever met a bob.

maybe mchost doesn't know about the problem?

I have an account with httpme and the support is excellent, Aussie Bob is the owner and as you can see, he frequents WHT :)

:wavey:

Originally posted by flamesburn
I wouldnt mind outside tech if they understood english, but i find myself re-submitting tickets upwards of 8 times, with each ticket simply being a re-wording of the previous, in hopes that the tech might understand what is wrong.

can you please post here (or PM me) few of your support tickets and replies? I want to see how professional they are...

I might outsource my support in mid-2003 thats why i'm interested

outsourcing support is not nessecary.
When it gets to the point that there are more tickets than the single owner can handle - there will be more than enough money for a new employee to take them.

Cant wait to get to that stage.

When you have in house help staff + outsource as well, generally you need to stream line the communications. as it will make your company achive it`s goals and make customer happiness levels go up.

If you feel they don`t understand a situation or a question. take a few and make sure they understand, so it does not repeat again; tell them to write it down

as any staff, there is a training stage or introductory time frame where bob cares needs to understand your company needs.

Every web hosting company has thier own view of what they think is an ideal situation.

Instead of getting upset and screaming at people who don`t fully understand the american slang, take a few to translate.

I have seen tickets say;

My web site site is whacking out, and sluggish as snails.

Imagine what its like to read that and you are just learning engwish :)

translation:
The web site is slow.


at any point, getting results is achieved by taking a few minutes to reword and explain. getting upset and screaming will not get what you want.

id post a reply however mchost recently "cleaned up" their database by deleting all their support tickets that were closed.

my opinion is they realized how pointless most of the replies were.

Actually Indians are generally English literate. They are taught English and they do use them in their education. There are many who had mastery of the language. It can however be a problem if it is american slang. They may speak with their accent, but as long as someone don't speak the same way, you would consider it as with an accent anyway, though it is hard to understand sometimes.

i agree that slang may be hard to udnerstand, however when providing service to english speaking customers, it is common sense to expect them to use common terms in that language. I would never open up a company catering to say asian people and expect someone who can barely speak any asian language to be a customer support person, its just plain bad business, and many hosts dont have the business sense to realize this.

Originally posted by flamesburn
i agree that slang may be hard to udnerstand, however when providing service to english speaking customers, it is common sense to expect them to use common terms in that language. I would never open up a company catering to say asian people and expect someone who can barely speak any asian language to be a customer support person, its just plain bad business, and many hosts dont have the business sense to realize this.

It's really out of your hands. This probably goes down to their business plan, profit margins, etc.. Maybe if you are willing to pay more, and you can get their other customers to pay more as well, mchost may be able to get some in-house tech support..

If you want to complain about service, direct the complaints to MCHost instead of creating a bad rep. for bobcares. If bad support is the problem, it's MCHost that should be in the downwind, and bobcares from McHost. I'm not sure what their situation is in terms of support, but perhaps MCHost didn't pay them, so it took longer, I mean it could have been anything.

Zak

I guess I can answer your question, as I have been doing a lot of research on this and Bob Cares – as a possibility that I might using them.

First, why would I use it?
After having a very good FAQ on my site, there are still relatively easy support questions coming in. I find that it is cheaper to use Bob cares for such things, while I work on expanding and promoting my business. Same with my techs, I rather have them do something on more of a higher level. I do not use them yet, but I am planning to expand my business – which will take a way some of my time from the helpdesk.

I did a lot of research on Bob cares, and I have spoken to the head guy via AIM (I *think* his name is Amar – I might be wrong). He seems to be a very nice person. Additionally, I spoke with other companies using BobCares. Overall, I found that they do a very good job, as many of the people I spoke with are very satisfied.

Flamesburn,
I would not judge Bob cares from one company. In no way I am saying that there are no problems, I believe you. But could that be a problem only at that company? Could that be that the company you are hosting with has a different deal/plan with Bob Cares? That could result in answering your questions.

Additionally, e-mail your host and let them know if Bob Cares answers the thicket in a way that you did not expect. If they have forums, ask how other clients experience is?

I am also a customer of MCHost and my issue with Bobcares is that I actually know what I am doing most of the time. When I submit a support ticket and get a stupid answer, that doesn't help anything.

I can see Bobcares being usefull for shared hosts where most of the clients don't have a clue anyways. But, a host that offers reseller services should not outsource that aspect of their support.

Originally posted by flamesburn
i agree that slang may be hard to udnerstand, however when providing service to english speaking customers, it is common sense to expect them to use common terms in that language. I would never open up a company catering to say asian people and expect someone who can barely speak any asian language to be a customer support person, its just plain bad business, and many hosts dont have the business sense to realize this.

Definitely true. Yanks have this amazing ability to type like they speak!

There's also an issue with technical ability highlighted in this thread.

I remember I had these young Indians working for me once and they were far too cocksure. They'd just barge in format this, install that with no plan, no firm idea of what the problem was and no thought for the ramifications. No reflection on Indians - these were young and cocky though.

Some of the support request we get are difficult, and it isn't slang. See below:

Hi Support,

I was clean up web pager then put new web pager from Ms Front pager but It
wont work with password. WS_FTP worked with password.

I was removed files from _private, _vti_bin, vti_cnf, _vti_log, vti_pvt, and
vti_txt. It was belong to Ms Front Pager.

Could you clean up all files please?

Thank you,


Could mean a few things, took me a couple tries to get it right. Now try this if english isn't your first language. :)

Heh, sounds like it came from babelfish. :D

Originally posted by parawing742
I can see Bobcares being usefull for shared hosts where most of the clients don't have a clue anyways. But, a host that offers reseller services should not outsource that aspect of their support.

Why not? My judgement i will admit is a little bit biased, but i fully believe that hosts can outsource reseller support.

Originally posted by Taylor


Why not? My judgement i will admit is a little bit biased, but i fully believe that hosts can outsource reseller support.

Because the reseller should be smart enough to take care of most issues himself (I know this isn't always the case). So the tickets that the resellers submit should be more difficult issues that bobcares couldn't help with anyways. I don't know what server access bobcares gets, but I have never yet gotten a response from them that solved my problems. My tickets usually consist of either server/service down or configuation problems. OK, maybe I'm from utopia, but that's how I operate.

Regardless, hosting companies should have a comprehensive knowledge base/faq to reduce the need for help. I've found very few hosts that actually have this.

Originally posted by parawing742


Because the reseller should be smart enough to take care of most issues himself (I know this isn't always the case). So the tickets that the resellers submit should be more difficult issues that bobcares couldn't help with anyways. I don't know what server access bobcares gets, but I have never yet gotten a response from them that solved my problems. My tickets usually consist of either server/service down or configuation problems. OK, maybe I'm from utopia, but that's how I operate.

Regardless, hosting companies should have a comprehensive knowledge base/faq to reduce the need for help. I've found very few hosts that actually have this.


Understandable, and I agree with you. I mean this in no way as a bash of bobcares, just a general statement. Shouldn't a company with professional/experienced server admins have little difficulty with any kind of problem? So pretty much i was getting at that the support should be able to cover any type of host i think, I don't know my meds (pain killers) are starting to kick in.. I'm lost lol :)

Originally posted by Taylor


Shouldn't a company with professional/experienced server admins have little difficulty with any kind of problem?

Right, but they may know what the problem is but that doesn't mean they can fix it. They don't have root access to the server do they?

Despite the language difference, do they have the technical knowledge to answer questions?

language probs
:D

I've also used 1 or 2 hosting companies in the past who used Indian support, and it was terrible. I suspect it was BobCares, but can't say for sure.

English isn't my 1st language, it's my 3rd.
I agree that sales/support staff should be very ellequent in their answers, however when you look at countries, such as the USA, where "english" (and I use the word losely here) is the main language, there are people all over the country who do not speak english (Just look at the Jerry Springer 'celebrities'). But in fairness everyone should be able to use a spell checker, and a company whose main source of income is clear email communication MUST make an effort to ensure that its staff can write a grammatically correct response.

I heard a little rumour that mchost is dropping Bobcares and running with their own inhouse support staff. Good move Marc. ;)

It's all a lie .. AusieBob owns bobcares ... and they are renaming it to aussiebobcares.co.au

Originally posted by HingyGuy
aussiebobcares.co.au

LOL

LOL

:emlaugh:

Hi Support,

I was clean up web pager then put new web pager from Ms Front pager but It
wont work with password. WS_FTP worked with password.

I was removed files from _private, _vti_bin, vti_cnf, _vti_log, vti_pvt, and
vti_txt. It was belong to Ms Front Pager.

Could you clean up all files please?

Thank you,


Could mean a few things, took me a couple tries to get it right.

Guys like this are the people that need support. Sounds like he was poking around in a FrontPage web and deleted stuff out of the FrontPage folders that it needed. I think ignorance is why hosts recommend that customers NOT ftp to their sites. He probably just needed extensions installed. Something like this would be difficult to interpret unless that tech knew almost every word and could interpret what it means.

Overall, an outsourced tech support team could be a good 1st Tier support for simple problems that could be understood. That team should be briefed on specifics related to the company that hired them. For something more complicated or not understood, the outsource company could bump the ticket to the next level which may be the company that hired them. Afterall, outsourced support in the middle of the night beats no support if the host/reseller only provides support 9-5.

According to an mc host mailer, they are moving all tech support in house..however we were told a fewmonths ago..all tech was moving in house to 24 hour phone support, that still hasnt happend, so who knows about the move to in house. However if it goes through, definitely a smart move on Marc's part.

Hi Support,

I was clean up web pager then put new web pager from Ms Front pager but It
wont work with password. WS_FTP worked with password.

I was removed files from _private, _vti_bin, vti_cnf, _vti_log, vti_pvt, and
vti_txt. It was belong to Ms Front Pager.

Could you clean up all files please?

Thank you,


Could mean a few things, took me a couple tries to get it right.

English is my 1st language, and I still don't really understand what that client is asking. My guess would be English isn't their first language. My question is where did that kid go to school? hehe ;) I have done quite a bit of research on Bobcares on here, and despite the fact I have never used them, I would highly recommend them. They seem to reply very quickly and get it right most of the time. I don't think you can bash a company for not being able to respond correctly to a message like THAT ^^.