Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : how do you set up your hosting biz to provide great tech support?

[edmond dantes]

at an affordable cost?

we are working on some internal systems and want to know what support models hosts use to support their clients, keep them happy, and at an affordable level.

some hosts have amazing support and how others (charging the same price or more for service) have inferior support.

i think support is very important to clients and would like to find a model that provides excellent support at reasonable costs

any ideas/imput would be appreciated

[IH-Rameen]

I think providing good support is pretty much just common sense. Keep your cool and treat the customer the same way you expect to be treated.

By support models I guess you mean the support infrastructure for delivering support? You don't need anything fancy. Keep it streamlined and keep it simple..

[edmond dantes]

Originally Posted by IH-Rameen

I think providing good support is pretty much just common sense. Keep your cool and treat the customer the same way you expect to be treated.

By support models I guess you mean the support infrastructure for delivering support? You don't need anything fancy. Keep it streamlined and keep it simple..

here is what im referring to

lets say you have a hosting company where you want 99% of your responses answered (or completed) in 20 min or less and you have 400 clients (or servers), and your support department runs 24/7 and offers telephone and email support.

you need at least 1+ warm body on shift at all times, so lets say you need at least 5 tech support staff minimum just to cover the hours, plus 1 manager. and then additional staff for scalability during times when you likely need more than 1 support person, (other than midnight shift)

im trying to figure that model out

[wirefusemedia]

You just did?

[edmond dantes]

Originally Posted by ZinkHosting

You just did?

ha, im guessing actually. wanted somebody with experience to discuss it in some detail, especially the part where the clients are very impressed with the level of suppor, not just adequate

[maknet]

I think it depends on your budget. I believe there are some excellent out-source companies that handle this, depending on your volume.

Are you trying to "figure out" if a certain model works? or "i want the best possible for the least possible money?"


Lawrence

[edmond dantes]

Originally Posted by maknet

I think it depends on your budget. I believe there are some excellent out-source companies that handle this, depending on your volume.

Are you trying to "figure out" if a certain model works? or "i want the best possible for the least possible money?"


Lawrence

good question, i want to figure out the model that gives exemplary support (ie responses within 20 min, problems solved in reasonable times, and good explainations from techs that care and communications get sampled and reviewed for quality control)

without the cost of providing the above resulting in making us lose money in business

[JohnCrowley]

Pay your employees $40,000+ per year and that will be a good start. Works for us.

- John C.

[hD-Scott]

We always try to exceed our customers' expectations. We also are ALWAYS honest with our clients. If we need to investigate something, we tell them and either give them an estimate or a time we'll check back with them during the process. If we don't know the answer, we're honest and tell them and tell them we will find out for them. We're proactive when we see an issue, sending out alerts either by email, on our announcement page, or on our forums. And we strive to answer all tickets within 30 minutes with a human response. We don't count the autoresponse given by our support system. Also, we NEVER use canned responses and we always give the answer to the client FIRST and then kindly point them to the KB or tutorial, or website, where they can read more information. There is nothing worse than someone answering a question with a link and nothing more, or making a client feel like they're being bothersome because they didn't check the kb first.

We're no experts, but these are the things that we do and if you were to ask our clients, they would rate our customer service and support very high.

[IMeanWebHosting]

Originally Posted by JohnCrowley

Pay your employees $40,000+ per year and that will be a good start. Works for us.

- John C.

Are you currently hiring?!

[SMLMATS]

Thanks Scott, I'm interested in this info too.

[maknet]

Originally Posted by edmond dantes

good question, i want to figure out the model that gives exemplary support (ie responses within 20 min, problems solved in reasonable times, and good explainations from techs that care and communications get sampled and reviewed for quality control)

without the cost of providing the above resulting in making us lose money in business

I still think it depends on your budget. Ie, the stage of growth your business is in.

0 vs. 1 vs. 5 vs. 10 employees have different requirements.


Lawrence

[maknet]

Originally Posted by powerMonster-Scott

There is nothing worse than someone answering a question with a link and nothing more, or making a client feel like they're being bothersome because they didn't check the kb first.

Hear, Hear!

I especially hate that for the larger tech companies. (registrars and the like)

Mostly because the brain-dead tech problems i can handle myself. It is the complex problems i need help with. Sometimes it just seems like the Indian data centre just quickly scans for keywords and then posts a crappy, unrelated link.


Lawrence

[jstanden]

Originally Posted by maknet

I still think it depends on your budget. Ie, the stage of growth your business is in.
0 vs. 1 vs. 5 vs. 10 employees have different requirements.

Exactly. If you don't have the budget or a group of co-founders then your own passion has to fill in the blanks for a while.

It's easy to come up with a theoretical solution to providing great support by having people distributed throughout multiple timezones. Then you'll run into the issue where somebody is ill or wants to take a vacation, so you'll need standby people or someone working a double shift.

If you're just starting out, that's going to be cost prohibitive. Make yourself as available as possible, to the degree your time and profit can afford, but don't promise what you can't deliver on. Work toward 20 minute replies and 24 hour support.

Offer a way people can get in touch with you for actual emergencies, or set up a routing rule in your helpdesk to send you an SMS. Just make sure you're filtering mail before it lands in your '911' mailbox or you'll stop taking those notifications seriously when they pull you out of bed at 3am.

That's also part of the reason we host our live help as a group chat rather than 1-on-1. In the occasions where we're not around, it's fairly common for our community to start helping each other. It's similar to the effect you get with forums. It works for the general questions and troubleshooting that don't require sysadmin access to the servers.

[jstanden]

Originally Posted by maknet

Sometimes it just seems like the Indian data centre just quickly scans for keywords and then posts a crappy, unrelated link.

That's really the problem, right -- if it's an unrelated link?

I'll send people a link to the blog, forums, wiki, Twitter, YouTube tutorial video, bug tracking, wishlist, or whatever. Most of the time people are happy to discover more resources are available. I still address them by name while pointing them in the right direction.

Sure, you can't expect people to check every self-help resource before writing in. Sometimes you just have to be a concierge.

I still think it's important to have great resources that you can send people to with a link. Over here we have a habit of creating a reusable resource (like a blog post or wiki article) after we hear the same question 2-3 times.

I agree you have to be tactful about it. You can't just send a link without understanding what someone is asking and pointing them at the best resource.

Your bad experiences were probably with lazy techs just padding their average response time and daily number of replies. It's probably worth mentioning there, in aiming to provide great service, that putting metrics like that on too high of a pedestal will probably reduce the quality of your support. Techs will naturally try to make the metrics happy more than your clients happy.