Do you outsource your customer service or have people do it where you are? I'm trying to decide how to set ours up, and I know it's cheaper to route it elsewhere.

I hesitate though, because it can be a terrible experience (on the customer side) to call for help and speak with someone who doesn't speak your language (English) as their first language.

No..I refuse to ever outsource my customer service or support. I have to admit..that's what I do best.

Nah..I just need to be a better marketer myself.

Bryon

We have our own support staff 24/7/365.

Customer Service is your most valuable asset in the hosting business as so many hosts are pretty much the same these days. If you go "cheap" on the one thing that sets you apart, you're asking for trouble.

For us, we did give an outsource company a trial run on our SALES support which lasted 2 weeks (we prepaid 2 months so they knew we were serious, and we were looking to expand to 24/7 sales support), however their techs were less than aproachable in tickets with potential customers. Both myself and the staff here found ourselves babysitting and cleaning up other peoples messes.

So my advice is DO NOT outsource such a vital part of your company. If you need to outsource something, maybe you can outsource some of your system admin work or something, but don't outsource the "face" of your company. You'll never find an outsource agency that is as committed as an employee who wants to get paid.

I agree about keeping it in house. That is when the company will typically lose its touch and feel.

You can't outsource your personality and there is always a personality associated with a sales associate or technician.

If you really want to outsource, you may as well get one of those bots that take over when live chat is offline. They are effective and you know what kind of service you are providing. It isn't the best way to deal with it, but outsourcing sales will probably end up giving you the same level of quality as they do not have any real motivation to sell your services.

Hope that helps.

I agree with all here customer service is the single most important aspect. No company can offer total faultless service, hardware can fail any time but if your customer service is good the customer won’t mind to much as long as there kept in the loop and the issue is resolved quickly. Dont outsource this as you can discredit your services with people who don’t really care about your business as you do. We here from many business who have had many problems with customer service and this is one of the most single pit falls a company can make.
you may have the best products to offer
you may have the best support to offer but if your customer service is not good then you will lose customers and the retention of these customers is very important.

What I do is, right now I currently only have 3 people in my team they all speak English. I run Live Support off MSN and AIM sounds weird right? Its the two most popular messenger systems also We don't have a great income so we can't afford to purchase a license for a Live Support System.

There are many ways you can do or lets say " Run Customer Support " you just need to find the way its made or best works for you and your clients.

Hello Greg. Woulda been nice for you to holla me on msn last night but yeah personally I dont think this sounds weird. We run MSN Support as well as Site Live Support (Powered by Crafty Syntax, LiveZilla is just too big and CS is nice and simple. ) but yeah Clients Like it so im going to stick with it.

- Many Thanks,

Same here in our hosting program. 24/7 Customer Support is so important which is one of the reason that web hosting companies are so successful throughout these years.

We have live support (about 15:00-22:00 at England/France time) and Support ticket..

Yep, in house, all the way baby.

It might not be that important when in earth the customer staff are actually since regardless of the geographical locations of the staff, if you click on the live chat icons and then find someone on the other end, that would be acceptable and the most important thing is providing in-depth knowledge and expertise to the customers and not simply offering general information about the accounts.

Currently in house. That's the only way to ensure the quality of the service.

Probably would stay this way for years to come.

I use close friends, Plus some family members for customer service. They are highly educated in the field of hosting and server management

Customer service is the thing which is actually add on to your business, you should try to apply it in house for better results