Should Hosts include Forum as their support! - Page 2

Naeem|THB · Post #16 (**permalink**) 08-12-2005, 02:38 PM

Personally i like the ideas of forums however many clients may be put off from empty forums, But at the end of the day "You are what you are".
Forums can be a useful resource for non specific hosting related issues e.g Web design etc, It is also a good place for your clients to be able to post testimonials.

qchco · Post #17 (**permalink**) 08-12-2005, 05:55 PM

I believe a forum is great, but as many has said it needs to look busy. An empty forum does not look good.

ayksolutions · Post #18 (**permalink**) 09-23-2005, 10:27 PM

I think that forums are good and as a person who runs a hosting company, I just installed one, phpbb of course.

Give it some time to pick up pace with customers and it will give your website a definite edge over the ones who do not have one. It simply looks as if people actually use your services.

RaviAgarwal · Post #19 (**permalink**) 09-24-2005, 02:17 PM

Forum for support is not good. Forums are for grievances, Comments, Announcenets, ideas sharing and discussions. Also, prospective clients evaluates your services based on forum activity and replies.

We did an experiemnt.. kept a section of forum for "Customers Only" and it proved to be a great success. If customers have any problem/concern they can easily post there and we took that issue on priority.

For support we put a separate system in place (Cerberus HelpDesk) and we encouraged our clients to use that if there is no urgency.

Support request can be of three types..

1) Urgent (Site Down, Email etc.)
2) Regular (permissions, DB restore etc.)
3) Delayed (when support take extra ordinary time in replies).

For 1st live-chat/phone is good. For 2nd Tickets/Support Helpdesk is good. For 3rd Forum is best.

So, Forum is essential, whether you use it for support or not.

Hope this will help you to design your support system

peter phillips · Post #20 (**permalink**) 10-28-2005, 11:02 AM

I think a host should include forums as an additional support. Having a forum is good for the customers to discuss and share their experiences and also helps in building a community. The only thing that the hosts need to work on would be getting traffic to the forum.

JSlane-Hosts · Post #21 (**permalink**) 06-04-2006, 03:14 PM

Using a forum is a good idea, I've had a few customers that said it's great that if they have any problems or anything they're able to chat with other customers and also able to leave feedback for others to read.

my-e-space · Post #22 (**permalink**) 06-04-2006, 08:36 PM

Forums are always nice, but you have to have it setup so that if a user posts on the forum for support, you are notified. Otherwise you end up checking the forum every hour to see if there's new posts. After awhile of there being no new posts, you stop checking as often, and THATS when the user posts and gets mad because they had to wait!.
If you are going to have a forum, just use it or a community type thing, and make it clear that if they use it for support, it might take longer.

NZN · Post #23 (**permalink**) 06-20-2006, 08:12 AM

I think forums are good to build a relationship with your customers, announce server upgrades, add hosting features and to just "shoot the breeze" so to speak, but forums shouldnt be used as a primary support tool.

ThinkSupport · Post #24 (**permalink**) 06-21-2006, 02:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NZN

I think forums are good to build a relationship with your customers, announce server upgrades, add hosting features and to just "shoot the breeze" so to speak, but forums shouldnt be used as a primary support tool.

Exactly ..also you need to takecare that the forum is has some really good and helpfull moderators and managed properly.