This is the 3rd article in the PremiusHosting article series, this article
will provide important information that would interest at most individuals who
are starting out their web hosting business, we will provide information and
quick notes on the support methods that are currently being used by small,
medium and large scale web hosts.
As most of you should already know, your
clients are your biggest asset, for that you must provide them with all the
support and information they would need, the methods in which web hosts provide
support for their clients vary, but all of them evolve under the main idea of
providing their clients with the support they need, when they need it.
Live
sales and technical support are one of these methods currently being used by
lots of web hosts, we for example provide this service to our clients and
visitors 8 hours per day, which usually helps with the direct interaction with
clients, lots of things you must think of and consider 1st of which is what
software to use, their are lost of help desk systems that has the live support
feature, some cost money and some are free to use, you will need to research
those options and determine which one best fits your needs, to name a few you
can check out live person or Kayako. The 2nd thing you should consider is who
will man the live support, are they competent and knowledgeable to do the job
efficiently, if your offering linux web hosting plans, then your staff must be
knowledgeable in the Linux OS and its issues, having the icon on your site with no one ever online is hardly
called live support, you must research the expenses, pros and cons along side
with your budget, and then come to a decision weather you want to provide this
service in the time being.
A ticket system is the most important and widely
used support system as an effective method for providing support, a ticket
system is basically organizing the emails sent to tech support, sales staff
etc... the capabilities of each system varies, but it usually provides an
automated response, with important information for the client, a url where the
user can access and update his ticket, or post a reply, we also provide this
service for all of our Affordable windows web hosting plans clients, a ticket
system also usually comes with a knowledge base with answers common questions,
of course this is also available for any of our Cheap linux web hosting plans,
you can check out our
help desk system to see a live example. There are a number of free ticket
systems, but most lack the important and necessary functionalities, and it is
highly recommended that you put such a system in place for your clients.
The
3rs method that we are going to discuss in this article is a community a forum
or call it whatever you like, this is an excellent method to increase the
interactivity with your website visitors, and also a good way to provide
support, although it might not be the best way to do so, forums are easy to
install, for example a phpbb forum can be easily installed from the control
panel of any of our Affordable windows web hosting plans, you can check
out a live example at our
community boards. There are also a number of paid forum scripts that can
bought, any of our Cheap linux web hosting plans come with an auto installer for
a number of forums included in the fantastico auto installer.
Of course in any
of the above cases you must take care of who is going to provide this service
to your clients and visitors, this is extremely important, an incompetent or an
unprofessional employee can badly damage your companies reputation which makes
you loose
potential clients that you have worked hard to gain, review their past work,
see if they any past experiences and if they have any recommendations, test them
your self, ask questions, and then hire them for a short period, its not a bad
idea to submit a ticket your self with a made up email ID and see how they
respond.
We hope that this article has provided with quick information about
support methods their pros and cons and has helped you with your decision.
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Part of the PremiusHosting article series, PremiusHosting Technologies offers
affordable Windows web hosting plans and a number of other
services.
