Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Running a Web Hosting Business Tutorials : 15 Reasons why your customer service sucks!

[Host4Geeks-Kushal]

Customer service plays a very important and significant role not only in the hosting industry but as a matter of fact for any business. Over the years I have experienced some exceptional support, some good and some awful support. In this post I have tried to highlight 15 things that that makes your customer support suck!


P.S- The points are randomly listed in no particular fashion.

1. You are not a good listener. You answer your customers even before reading the complete question or overlooking certain parts of it.

2.Your customer service is not transparent. Chances are that you use sentences like, “We are looking into it”.

3.You do not have a personal relationship with your client. You should not be able to sleep properly at night if you know that one of your customer is upset with you/your services.

4.You reply my emails/tickets with a one word answer. I explain my problem/issue to you in a 3 paragraph email and all I hear from you is, “we are having our Level 3 Tech look into this for you. I would prefer directly hearing back from your Level 3 Tech or atleast some info on what the problem is.

5.You make assumptions as to what my problem is. I want specific answers and details as to what is causing my problem, I have no interest in hearing from you as to what you “think” the problem is, I want to know what “exactly” the problem is.

6.You have the same internal SLA as your external SLA. If you are offering a 30 Minutes response time to your customer you atleast need to have a 20 minutes internal SLA to be on time.

7.Your system doesn’t work. I hardly raise a ticket with Amazon or Ebay. Why do I raise a ticket with yours?

8.You aren’t having any fun assisting your customers. The following quote by Tony Hsieh explains this better than anyone.

Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliver good service from unhappy employees.

9.You do not adapt to your customers’ needs, instead you make your customer adapt to you.

10.You deliver what you promise. Whereas you can deliver something more than what your promise and put a smile on your customers’ face.

11.You use email for support. You suck big time! (Drop me a mail and I will setup a helpdesk for you absolutely free, but please get out of that inbox of yours.)

12. A customer paying $100 is more valuable to you than a customer paying $10.

13. Your profit is $100,000 per month but you spend only $5000 on customer support. Which is a pity on you.

14. You support reps. do not have enough privilege hence they have to escalate most of the issues (which increases response time).

15. You promise “24x7x365” support whereas in reality you offer 23x6x365” support. What if have a problem on that 1 Day/1 Hour? Who is going to help me with it?

[b4uindia]

Very good points mentioned in this post I agree that customer support shall be of top notch for any company who is interested to have goodwill and reputation in market.

[Martin-D]

Actually, most of those points are completely arbitrary. It all depends on the services you offer.

Example: "10. You deliver what you promise". Since when does that mean customer server sucks?

[SajanP]

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

13. Your profit is $100,000 per month but you spend only $5000 on customer support. Which is a pity on you.

How can you possibly find a direct variation between monthly net profit and customer support expense that applies to every business?

That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard.

[Martin-D]

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

1. You are not a good listener. You answer your customers even before reading the complete question or overlooking certain parts of it.

One of the jobs of a customer service agent or technical support agent is to work out what the customer really wants because 9 times out of 10, the customer themselves don't really know... hence the ticket/contact.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

2.Your customer service is not transparent. Chances are that you use sentences like, “We are looking into it”.

Would you rather you received no reply for an hour or two and be left wondering what's going on? Chances are you'd come on here and complain they didn't reply to your ticket. A simple response acknowledging your ticket by a human can go a long way to reassure a customer their issue/question is being dealt with.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

3.You do not have a personal relationship with your client. You should not be able to sleep properly at night if you know that one of your customer is upset with you/your services.

You can never please all of your customers 100%. While one would always aim to ensure customers are happy to the best of your ability, to suggest someone should lose sleep over an unhappy customer is ridiculous. The mere fact hundreds of posts on here are from unhappy customers because they've been screwing their hosting company is testament to that.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

4.You reply my emails/tickets with a one word answer. I explain my problem/issue to you in a 3 paragraph email and all I hear from you is, “we are having our Level 3 Tech look into this for you. I would prefer directly hearing back from your Level 3 Tech or atleast some info on what the problem is.

See my reply to point 2 above.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

5.You make assumptions as to what my problem is. I want specific answers and details as to what is causing my problem, I have no interest in hearing from you as to what you “think” the problem is, I want to know what “exactly” the problem is.

By definition, if your asking for help with a problem it means you do not know how to fix it. Giving you specific details about a problem will most likely leave you more confused than you were in the first place. If you request information relating to what 'exactly' the problem was, then by all means expect to receive it. If you don't, try not to lose any sleep over it.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

6.You have the same internal SLA as your external SLA. If you are offering a 30 Minutes response time to your customer you atleast need to have a 20 minutes internal SLA to be on time.

Again, complete tosh. If the advertised SLA is 30 minutes then that's all you have to worry about. Anything else internal is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

7.Your system doesn’t work. I hardly raise a ticket with Amazon or Ebay. Why do I raise a ticket with yours?

Amazon and eBay don't provide hosting services. Additionally, eBay and Amazon make it incredibly difficult to open a ticket of any sort so they're perfect examples of how to alienate customers. Bad examples you've picked there. When did you last hear how good their customer service was?

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

8.You aren’t having any fun assisting your customers. The following quote by Tony Hsieh explains this better than anyone.

Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliver good service from unhappy employees.

Business can't win. If they have 'fun' with their customers, they're not serious enough. If they don't, they're boring. There's a fine line between being too familiar with a customer and being Joe Blank. Your quote has no relationship with your point above.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

9.You do not adapt to your customers’ needs, instead you make your customer adapt to you.

If we all pandered to our customers' needs we'd all be out of business. Again, you can't please all of the people all of the time. I walked in to the supermarket the other day wanting to buy a 4x4. I was disgusted to find they didn't sell them and wouldn't adapt to my needs.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

10.You deliver what you promise. Whereas you can deliver something more than what your promise and put a smile on your customers’ face.

Imagine that.. an airline flying you to a destination. Lets be honest, they really should have flown you to the other side of the planet, guided all the passengers in to a submarine and continue the journey from there.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

11.You use email for support. You suck big time! (Drop me a mail and I will setup a helpdesk for you absolutely free, but please get out of that inbox of yours.)

Plenty of people prefer email-based support than a ticket system which can often be confusing and difficult to use for the less experienced customer. As long as the customer is getting support, I see no problem.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

12. A customer paying $100 is more valuable to you than a customer paying $10.

Well, yes. A 1Kg gold nugget is more valuable than a 1g gold nugget. What's your point?

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

13. Your profit is $100,000 per month but you spend only $5000 on customer support. Which is a pity on you.

How do you know how much money businesses are spending on customer service/support? You don't. You're making assumptions based on no knowledge or facts at all.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

14. You support reps. do not have enough privilege hence they have to escalate most of the issues (which increases response time).

This is for accountability and due process. Response time hasn't been increased as you've received a response. I think you're referring to resolution time which is something completely different.

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

15. You promise “24x7x365” support whereas in reality you offer 23x6x365” support. What if have a problem on that 1 Day/1 Hour? Who is going to help me with it?

Taking this literally just shows how ignorant you are to this industry. 24x7x365 does not mean you will receive a response instantly when you submit a ticket regardless of time of day. It merely informs you that people are working around the clock within the business and you will receive support according to the advertised SLA.

I'd suggest you make different posts to increase your post count as this has been something of an epic fail.

[Host4Geeks-Kushal]

Originally Posted by Martin-D

I'd suggest you make different posts to increase your post count as this has been something of an epic fail.

I guess I do have enough post to access WHT freely.

You didn't like the post. Its your opinion.

[Hoopla-Brad]

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

I guess I do have enough post to access WHT freely.

You didn't like the post. Its your opinion.

I didn't like it either if that counts for anything

[SajanP]

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

I guess I do have enough post to access WHT freely.

You didn't like the post. Its your opinion.

Originally Posted by Hoopla-Brad

I didn't like it either if that counts for anything

I didn't either.

[StadenHosting]

I do think they are good points and ones that I will implement in future. I particularly agree with get one word answers back from support teams is so infuriating! Thanks for the tips.

[Host4Geeks-Kushal]

Originally Posted by HintonHost

I do think they are good points and ones that I will implement in future. I particularly agree with get one word answers back from support teams is so infuriating! Thanks for the tips.

Happy to see that there are some who liked it

[Servers4 Ankit]

Originally Posted by PromptSpace-Kushal

Customer service plays a very important and significant role not only in the hosting industry but as a matter of fact for any business. Over the years I have experienced some exceptional support, some good and some awful support. In this post I have tried to highlight 15 things that that makes your customer support suck!


P.S- The points are randomly listed in no particular fashion.

1. You are not a good listener. You answer your customers even before reading the complete question or overlooking certain parts of it.

2.Your customer service is not transparent. Chances are that you use sentences like, “We are looking into it”.

3.You do not have a personal relationship with your client. You should not be able to sleep properly at night if you know that one of your customer is upset with you/your services.

4.You reply my emails/tickets with a one word answer. I explain my problem/issue to you in a 3 paragraph email and all I hear from you is, “we are having our Level 3 Tech look into this for you. I would prefer directly hearing back from your Level 3 Tech or atleast some info on what the problem is.

5.You make assumptions as to what my problem is. I want specific answers and details as to what is causing my problem, I have no interest in hearing from you as to what you “think” the problem is, I want to know what “exactly” the problem is.

6.You have the same internal SLA as your external SLA. If you are offering a 30 Minutes response time to your customer you atleast need to have a 20 minutes internal SLA to be on time.

7.Your system doesn’t work. I hardly raise a ticket with Amazon or Ebay. Why do I raise a ticket with yours?

8.You aren’t having any fun assisting your customers. The following quote by Tony Hsieh explains this better than anyone.

Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliver good service from unhappy employees.

9.You do not adapt to your customers’ needs, instead you make your customer adapt to you.

10.You deliver what you promise. Whereas you can deliver something more than what your promise and put a smile on your customers’ face.

11.You use email for support. You suck big time! (Drop me a mail and I will setup a helpdesk for you absolutely free, but please get out of that inbox of yours.)

12. A customer paying $100 is more valuable to you than a customer paying $10.

13. Your profit is $100,000 per month but you spend only $5000 on customer support. Which is a pity on you.

14. You support reps. do not have enough privilege hence they have to escalate most of the issues (which increases response time).

15. You promise “24x7x365” support whereas in reality you offer 23x6x365” support. What if have a problem on that 1 Day/1 Hour? Who is going to help me with it?

Great read, a lot of hosting providers really need to take a look into solid WHT like this.

Though when talking about what the customer is paying it you could include what kind of management they are under. I do believe everyone should be treated equally, though managed users should definitely have a higher priority... but that doesn't give any host an excuse to not attend their other users.

[JohnJ]

Originally Posted by sajanNOPPIX

I didn't either.

General consensus.

[nexxterra]

If you read this from a customers viewpoint you can see the validity in this post.
It is so easy as service providers with experience in the industry and technical expertise to totally overlook the somewhat simple outlook our customers may have.
I agree with some of the rebuttal posts, however, if you read the post with the view of a client with little of know experience and use it as a rough guide to structure your customer service policies, then both you and your clients may benefit.
The one thing we do most with any support request is analyze how we can eliminate the future need for any assistance with the same thing from another client IE: make it simpler, change an icon, etc.

[ChrisM92]

Very good points and very wise, thank you for this information it will help me out big time!

[GP2012]

solution: unmanaged services.