Phone support: do you require a web host to provide toll free tech support? |
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I am interested in what you all think about web hosting and toll free phone tech support. I grew up in the age of information technology where email and text messaging are the ‘in’ thing. In my opinion, voice to voice communication is slowly losing its popularity due to the ease of sending an email or text message.
Do you require a web hosting provider to offer phone support?
I created this post to get a poll of what people think about the importance of providing phone support. I am still drawn 50/50 whether phone support is required these days – especially for internet based operations like a web hosting business.
I can think of some PROS from both the customer and company perspective:
- Phone support is quick – Phone support provides instant communication between the client and support technician (unless you get put on hold!). No need to wait for email replies.
- Easier to explain yourself – It is certainly much easier to express yourself/problem over the phone. Sometimes type can’t get the proper message across.
- More personal – Phone support is more personal which makes a tech more willing to go the extra mile to help you/less willing to disappoint you. It also helps develop a personal relationship between the client and company.
- Customer retention – its harder to leave a personalized website hosting service compared to a web hosting company that has no idea that you exist.
There are some CONS – but mostly for the web hosting service provider.
- Increases hosting plan price – Phone support is more costly than your standard email/ticking support options. This leads to higher hosting plan prices.
- No records – There is no record of what is being said on the phone. While with support tickets you can go back and look at the text to get the information you need instead of having to re-ask the person over the phone.
- Ties up the support technician - The support tech must give you 100% of his/her attention while on the phone. This means he/she is unavailable to help other customers. Email/ticketing allows the support tech to knock out multiple problems at the same time.
- Language barriers – It can be hard to understand the person you are talking to if they are speaking to you in a 2nd language. Also accents can make it hard to understand what is being said.
- Technical Jargon – try saying a URL like this over the phone http://0bones.com/discussion.php?d=10010300000000000011
I can also see phone support being more crucial for different types of web hosting services.
For example, I would never sign up for a dedicated hosting service that does not offer phone support. There is nothing worse than sitting behind your computer waiting for a support technician to reply to your email as to why your server is down. Shared and reseller hosting services, in my opinion, are less likely to require phone technical support because most of the issues that arise are routine and can be fixed with a mouse click or two.
While there are certainly many PROS to offering phone support for your web hosting business, there are equally just as many CONS that weigh evenly.
Feb 17th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I definitely like phone support, but toll free is usually not needed.
A simple landline number is more than sufficient, as I can call them for free from my mobile…
The problem with the pay to call numbers is that they are extremely expensive to be called from a mobile, and toll-free numbers are often blocked from being called from a mobile.
Feb 17th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Another line of support that hasn’t been mentioned is live chat. I use a hosting company who have live chat support almost 24 hours a day – I’ve been with them for over 2 years and haven’t had a problem take longer than an hour to be fixed.
Feb 17th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I’m with Rik. I voted for “Couldn’t Make Up My Mind” only because chat wasn’t an option. Chat has almost all of the “Pros” of phone support plus the additional benefit of a record for all.
I like phone support. Tickets are OK, but usually I need help NOW! That is my problem with email and tickets. While I seldom need tech support, it seems that the bigger my problem, the longer the wait.
Feb 17th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
I’m thinking I agree with the idea of chat, although I’m sort of the mind that, should all other things fail and it’s an urgent situation, having a phone call as a last resort is a comforting knowledge.
Feb 18th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Phone support would be good. I think before trying to implement phone support though your chat support should be online and you should answer email.
Feb 27th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’ve built and run customer support center to support 20,000 merchant accounts nationwide as part of my running Global Services for a company. I worked out that on average for our business, a typical call cost our company was $16. Our business required 3 CSRs to provide coverage from 7 AM to 8 PM. I also found that most calls could be handled by less trained technicians, so I retained the services of an outsourced service in Canada to handle the bulk of our calls. Those calls cost us $7 each. Again, that was for our type of business and probably is not applicable to yours.
Knowing how support can become a cost-center sinkhole, I recommend that if you do plan to add phone support that you price it out and offer two plans:
1) pay-per-call service like Microsoft and many others do (Thus keeping hosting prices inexpensive for those of us who like our low-cost hosting.)
2) Increase service costs for those that require phone support.
Apr 1st, 2009 at 8:20 am
Hello,
Casted my vote on YES. I think phone support is essential, for me anyways. I sometime have serious problems and I need to talk to someone urgently. Using Live Chat they don’t always pay such high attention however I have found that support by phone is always effective.
All the best,
Jonas