by Paul Harbeck

This article explains that one of the most challenging facets of starting a new web hosting business, or even maintaining an existing one, is keeping your clients happy. Here are some tips to make help make your customers feel satisfied that won’t break the bank.

To attract potential customers and also to keep them, it is important your business tries to satisfy them as much as possible with fast, reliable and efficient customer service techniques. There are important, and also cost effective ways, to maintain your customers levels of satisfaction.

It is important to remember that starting, or maintaining, a working web hosting company does not mean that you need to break the bank to keep your clientele satisfied.

24 Hour Support/Live Chat:

Standards in web hosting have changed in the last couple of years. One of the major changes is 24 hour support. To attract serious clients as of late, it is important to offer a level of support that is at parity with the best.

This might seem an expensive option to provide, however, it does not need to be, especially if you are just starting up a small company. Today there are plenty of web hosting forums and administration forums that allow you to advertise your services for free. Many of these forums always have freelance operators requesting work. It is possible to find the right person for the job at a very low cost.

However it is always important to ensure who you are hiring to help out with your business. Always remember that these people represent your, and your business.

Email Support:

If it is not possible to offer 24 hour support, the luxury of getting a timely response for the client should always be there. There are always talented individuals willing to help out on web hosting forums and can usually be hired for small amounts of money, or, some will generally just work for free to pass the time.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) should always be advertised to ensure your customers are aware of the timeframe for a response. And if your business is running behind on that SLA, an auto-reply to your inbox explaining the temporary delay might save any angry emails if your deadline is not met.

Knowledge Base/Wiki:

Another option to help solve a client’s issue is a detailed knowledge base or wiki. Most good web hosting companies today have these available to paid clients. As a customer, I always found that a knowledge base was always useful to find out information, especially if a customer service representative was not available.

Information for your knowledge base can be found from a variety of places if you know where to look. For example, web hosting forums are full of free knowledge if you are patient enough to search for questions and answers. Search engines such as www.google.com, www.snap.com are just two good ways to find information for a knowledge base.

Another great option that has taken off as the Internet’s unofficial encyclopedia is www.wikipedia.org. There are developing web hosting wiki’s that are currently on the Internet that could also help you develop your own knowledge base or wiki.

A great example of a knowledge base is http://support.lypha.com/kb/.

Web Forum/Bulletin Board:

If you do not like 24 hour support/live chat or emails, or if you want another alternative for your customers, then you could try implementing a forum into your web hosting support repertoire. The advantage of a forum is this enables new and existing customers to interact with each other.

A web host with a good support network is always a popular selling tool. If it is there to see for potential customers they can see upfront what sort of customers you have, and how they interact. If you have a support or technical-minded customer base, implementing a forum can take some of the support workload off you or your business for no extra cost.

Phone Support:

Over the past couple of years phone support is an area of customer support that has expanded to become a more popular solution. A large majority of companies that offer phone support offer it as a free service to the customer. Larger companies see this as a means to keep a personal touch with their clients.

If you are a small hosting company, this is not always a cost effective solution to offer phone support. However, if you target your sales to a local geographical area it is possible for customers to call you directly for the cost of a local call. By limiting your geographical area it allows customers to understand the nature of your business is to maintain a healthy customer relationship.

In Australia, it is simple to setup a pre-paid phone number that you could use as a support line that customers could contact you locally. If you were a large company this option would seem highly unprofessional, although for a small company having a personal number to call adds a local feel to your business.

In Australia, generally calling a 1300 number is the cost of a local call. For example, http://www.cheap-1300-numbers.com.au.

Web hosting companies with a solid customer service base will always have a much better chance at succeeding as opposed to ones that do not. At the end of the day the customer is the most important asset that any business can have as they generate your revenue. If you look after your customers, then theory has it, they should look after you.

About the Author

Paul Harbeck is located in Melbourne, Australia. He has over seven years experience as a webmaster/admin with several successful websites. The current project he is working on is to launch his own personal website.