Making your customers happy is the key to success. Here's a few tips.

NobleCloud

NobleCloud

New member
My idea of a successful hosting business is not all about the prices.
I don't care about beating the competition out there by offering ridiculously cheap prices combined with an exuberant amount of data.
There's just far too much competition that by the time you become the "cheapest" you would have already gone bust. Then where do your customers go? People will trust you more if you manage to stay open.

No, the aspect I concentrate the most on is providing a quality of customer service that is high above that of most other companies. There are a lot of companies out there you see who aren't online a lot of the time, who take ages to respond to support tickets, and some even who are relentlessly unhelpful. There are others who simply don't care.

I believe that the key to success is making your customers happy.
They will be happy if they know that they have your constant support.

Here's some tips of how you can provide them with this (you probably already know this, but if you don't...then read and understand this).

1. Try to be online as much as you can.

2. Offer a live chat service (LiveZilla is good...and it's free).

3. Respond to support tickets within 24 hours (however try to respond within the hour, or at least within a few hours, if you can).

4. Always be the helpful guy. Answer their questions constructively not just submissively (i.e. explain the solution to them and how they can go about solving their problem, rather than just giving them a link or a screenshot to some FAQ resource and expecting them to figure it out).

5. And if you know that something needs to be sorted, say you haven't set up a service for them yet (and they've already paid for it), make sure you contact them with updates on the progress, even if they don't contact you. Only contact them if there's a reason to do so, though...never spam them! Only help them, if they wish to be helped.

6. Once their problems solved, don't end it there. Ask them if there's anything else you can help them with before closing the ticket. They will respect you for that, I can guarantee you.

I hope that helps. Please post below if you have any more questions. I will aim to get back to you within 24 hours. :)
 
... I hope that helps. Please post below if you have any more questions. I will aim to get back to you within 24 hours.
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No, I want you to respond on livechat, not in 24 hours :D.

Very helpful tips you wrote there, thank you for your time spent to write this article.
 
3. Respond to support tickets within 24 hours (however try to respond within the hour, or at least within a few hours, if you can).
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I honestly don't think I'd stick with a provider that took a few hours or 24 hours to respond to a support ticket.
 
Steve-Hostirian said:
I honestly don't think I'd stick with a provider that took a few hours or 24 hours to respond to a support ticket.
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Agreed. Most clients are not willing to wait more than an hour for a response to a support ticket. And 24 hours? That is a pretty ridiculous amount of time to have to wait for a response.
 
I respond within 5-10 minutes.
I was talking about hosts that have like 250 customers questioning them all at the same time.

Mind you, good point guys.
They'd have staff wouldn't they then?
I'm not awake today. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree though. The quicker they reply, and the more helpful their response, the happier the customer is. :)
 
eXPerience2010:

Very well said!
I agree with you that "Client Support" is what's going to keep us doing good business and maintain our customers.

Yes, we could do better in some areas, like in everything else. But, you nailed it right in the middle!
Thanks for a great post!

Regards,

Rodrigo
 
eXPerience2010 said:
I was talking about hosts that have like 250 customers questioning them all at the same time.
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If more than 1% of your client base are contacting for _support_ in any calendar month then you have ...
* a major problem
* need to put up some tutorials and how-to's
* not invested enough time/money in expanding your knowledgebase/ instructions/training materials
* have set the wrong expectations
* need to rethink what you're offering

Unless you're offering some very bespoke niche service, most of what a client can do should be automated and self-service, freeing up "support" for those who actually have a problem/need help rather than the run-of-mill issues like "How to setup an email account" or "Where are the statistics" etc.
 
othellotech said:
If more than 1% of your client base are contacting for _support_ in any calendar month then you have ...
* a major problem
* need to put up some tutorials and how-to's
* not invested enough time/money in expanding your knowledgebase/ instructions/training materials
* have set the wrong expectations
* need to rethink what you're offering

Unless you're offering some very bespoke niche service, most of what a client can do should be automated and self-service, freeing up "support" for those who actually have a problem/need help rather than the run-of-mill issues like "How to setup an email account" or "Where are the statistics" etc.
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WoW! I had never thought of that! :shaky:
That is a very good piece of information.
How do I get hold of tutorials though. Or do I have to make them? :confused:
 
Nice tips, I agree with others on the ticket response time. Anything over an hour for some type of response is unprofessional. At least let the customer know that you have started addressing the issue. 24hours should be the longest it takes to RESOLVE an issue, not respond. Responding within 24 hours looks like an overworked staff or one man team.
 
Thanks for all your contributions to this post.
I hope this topic can prove helpful to anyone who reads it.
Please keep adding your suggestions to make hosting services better.
 
Personally, I would not be comfortable with a host taking more than 30 minutes to post their answer in a ticket.

What do you guys think about it?
 
I totally agree, from a customers point of view.
However, as a hosting providers point of view this can sometimes be difficult when you have to answer queries from customers in different timezones. For them it could be lunchtime, but for you it could be 3am. And you could be asleep?! That's when things get a little tough. :confused:
 
ServerSea said:
Personally, I would not be comfortable with a host taking more than 30 minutes to post their answer in a ticket.

What do you guys think about it?
Click to expand...

It really depends on the question though; if it's something straightforward, sure, shouldn't take long. But what if they are asking "why does script XYZ not run" and you go into the code, point out the issue to them, etc.? I've done that on a slow day and debugging can take a bit.
 
idologic_dh said:
It really depends on the question though; if it's something straightforward, sure, shouldn't take long. But what if they are asking "why does script XYZ not run" and you go into the code, point out the issue to them, etc.? I've done that on a slow day and debugging can take a bit.
Click to expand...

That is a very valid point.
I had a customer contact me once asking me how to install Dolphin social networking script on his website.
I managed to help him with the issue, but it took me some time (about an hour...which is longer than my normal service time). Simply because I had never heard of this script before. Well you learn something every day. ;)

Nevertheless, you're quite right. It does depend on the issue.
It's best to say that your "average" response time is (response time here), rather than to say we "always" respond in (response time here).
 
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