Support is in itself the difference between a good hosting company and a that of a not so good company. To evaluate support, like any product or service you need to evaluate the user or clients point of view.

To determine this, simply think of products or services that you have purchased and rate their service based on your point of view. Examples could include, phone, internet, and TV packages as there industries are not dissimilar to hosting.

Then from this its vital to cater for both sides of the coin in terms of both covering costs as a provider and also providing the level of support the user expects at a price the user expects.

For me, good support is the following (client point of view):

• Rapport |There is nothing more important than the first impression or that first connection between a member of staff and a client, these first few words, minuets or second will dictate the mood and further direction of discussion and are vital for building a good client relationship.
  
  Building Rapport is somewhat of a sales technique however it simply means being in sync, by which in terms of hosting could as an example relate to ensuring the information you provide as a solution is at the skill level of the user or tailored for the user rather than that of generic or difficult solutions. This is achieved through collaborative discussion, by showing interest in their project, site or problem and taking a responsibility to ensure that you ensure the issue is resolved and follow it up.

• Honesty | As a client there is nothing worse than the feeling that you are being "fobbed off", this can come about due to endless discussion with different departments, generic answers or misunderstanding or answers.
  
  The ways to avoid these issues involve that of the simple principles of KISS (keep it simple stupid) and it is that of, ensure your support departments are simple clear and well defined and solutions well described and or explained, trying to avoid the user asking "Why is .... not ... ? or ...?".
  
  For Phone (PBX) and live support there are various issues involving transfers and this has become for many their biggest gripe with their provider related to the above. As a result a simple and most effective example of how to handle live and phone(PBX) systems where the operator (sales) may transfer a client to another operator (support) could be under best practice as follows:
  
  Operator (sales) will inform the client they will be placed on hold and then introduced to their new operator, during this period the operators (sales and support) will discuss your requirements/issue as described to the first operator (sales). The client is then taken off hold and introduced to the second operator (support) by the first operator (sales) before the first operator (sales) leaving the convocation.

• Knowledge | There is nothing worse than support staff that are untrained or have little to no knowledge in the area of which they provide support. Be that by those who essentially read a script or those who have little ability to visualise the problem the user is experiencing as well as those whose knowledge is too specific. As well as this it is also important for staff to have the ability to understand and accept that they are not always correct (difficult for most) as there are clients who will have far greater experience but are unable to make a simple changes due to their permission sets, as a result (being tied closely to building rapport) operators need to be able to judge the knowledge level of a client and also suggest or advise rather than preach to a client.

• Availability | 24/7/365 is a difficult issue during comparison to other industries mainly due to the fact many banks, phone companies, internet and TV providers do provide 24/7/365 support for certain issues as a result have only specific operators or instead provide what could be considered long opening hours (8:00 - 21:00) of which they maintain full staffing meaning they are capable of handling all issues during those hours. My personal preference is to have that of a fully capable support team available for the entire period stated rather than a partial team during an inaccurate period of time.
  
  Hosting instead seems to be somewhat of a kettle of fish in terms of many hosts will have staff available to acknowledge tickets and answer basic issues (internal knowledge bases) though many lack to have server administrators, network technicians, support managers or second or third tier support technicians meaning the majority of issues that causes sites to become unreachable or offline are not catered for as basic support technicians ether lack the knowledge and or access to resolve the issue. This then means issues are acknowledged however aren't essentially resolved until office hours.

As a Host | For most of the above Client views I have indicated my views, expectations or advise as a provider as a result I don't intend to elaborate further. However Availability and Knowledge are the key issues and because of this from a hosts point of view the following would be my considerations:

• Knowledge > There are a few ways of solving this issue, personally my approach, staff are the most important company asset and because of this I'm bias towards training and providing staff with material (internal documentation) that encourage them to personalise and connect with a client rather than simply fill in the blanks and paste an answer. Granted this method takes longer to resolve an issue however if it prevents additional queries and the client is satisfied then it is a non issue.
  
  
  Additionally to training, knowledge bases etc, hiring the right people for your company ethos and also selecting those who activity involve themselves in online communities and or web design/technologies is a definite advantage. This advantage is apparent specifically during lax or quiet support periods where staff can instead build rapport with a client by enquiring as to the progress, status, general problems or ideas as to their site, your service or in other general areas.

• Availability > My ethos as above is that of providing a full service during the hours stated, because of this there are a number of issues however forefront is that of cost and usage.
  
  Firstly cost, this depends on how you market your company, be that of price (USP) or specific expertise with .....cms (USP) or value added extras (USP), this is important as marketing on price alone will sacrifice support which is the trap many new resellers or providers fall into. to avoid this set a reasonable price that will cover costs and includes a margin, this will then result in volume sales increasing profit (in basic terms).
  
  Secondly is usage, during certain times staff will be unused meaning high numbers of staff will incur unnecessary cost, and during times of high usage your responsiveness will suffer with low numbers. The easiest solution is to evaluate usage continually and have staff on a shift pattern allowing for high and low periods, additional to this have on-call staff (such as server technicians/administrators etc) and or remote support staff (paid on hourly basis, at predefined rates) for unexpected issues such as illnesses, unavailability, various network attacks or outages etc who are capable of being onsite or available within certain time frames.
  
  This would and is common sense for most CEOs/Directors, however many still (even larger companies) don't have staff available such as server administrators on call or a 24/7 basis. As for smaller companies/start-ups the best advice is that of a PDA/smart phone... this will mean disrupted sleep although it will provide you a means of answering tickets on a 24/7 basis.

Just my cents worth (probably more like 20) but it's tied into "you get what you pay for" and "quantity isn't necessarily quality" in my opinion when it comes to providing a full 24/7/365 support team for a client.