Most widely used support option.

[inogenius]

Which type of support contact offered do you find that is most widely used, out of like your Live support, Messengers, Forum or email. I've found that email and AIM is the most commonly used for to contact me, however is it like that for every host?

Heck I can't even get anyone to post in my support forums.

EDIT: as you can that was just a bunch of thoughts on support put into one post.

[allan]

I am not a host, but from my personal experience, e-mail is my first choice of contact. I am not a big fan of IM for support -- I prefer that someone has time to research an answer and give me the right information (unless it is an easy answer). I only use phone support if I am not getting any response from any other methods.

[alpha]

well, although I am not a host - I have worked for several; all of which heavily emphasized on the use of their support ticket system for all issues. I have yet to work with/for a host that liked to use the live chat tech support because some times tech support issues need more time to tackle so sales questions through live chat features and tech support issues through the helpdesk was the combination.

Also, I don't think a support forum is a good idea for a host - because not only will you get a lot of impatient customers posting 1sec after a server goes down or 1sec after an email goes unanswered, they will use it against you if the forum is specifically for support issues.

However, you should try to promote a community for all your customers where they can come together and discuss issues that needs to be worked on etc... a support forum is just like a help desk except every issue is open to everyone else who wanders by... a forum that consists of a community of your customers would be better.

[OKIHost]

For us I would have to say helpdesk is #1 followed by AIM which we also get alot of support and sales questions at.. Email support is last and we really try and shy users away from using it as it is harder to maintain our support issues should we need to send a ticket to a higher level of support and such.

[rochen]

For us, number one is the helpdesk followed by our customer forums :)

[zerphyte]

A majority of our client base contacts us via phone/email. However we do have a few that like icq. Personally I prefer people contact us via email so that we can log everything. Great for productivity and performance reports.

[Brownie]

Im not a host anymore :) but when I was, email was the most popular method of contact

hth

[interactive]

I'm not a host. But I think the easiest most common method would be either email,IM, or Phone (perferbly phone). But just as allan said if it's a hard question, email would be better.

[Dave]

I would have to say eMail and helpdesk as the customer's and my own prefered message. HelpDesk is best because customers can always access it for reference.

[SWR]

I'm sure that most hosts would agree that a good ticket system works best.

However, when I was hosted, I preferred email. I think most customers do.

But, since the thread asks which is the most widely used form of support, I would have to say Help Desk. But, we strongly encourage and promote it. I'm sure we'd get a lot more email requests; if it wasn't against our TOS. :)

[Wire]

When online, chat is best so you can walk-through the client through the situation. I don't really enjoy posting a ticket and getting a long ticket id. Makes me think it will tak ages to get answered.

[vito]

I'd have to say that email is #1 followed by the telephone. Before I moved my site to a new server, I had a helpdesk installed. I didn't bother installing it on the new servewr, as I found that almost none of my customers bothered to use it.

Forums, if improperly managed, can work against you. But the concept can obviously benefit you. There are plenty of hosts that have a very healthy forum. Best example is httpme.com. The whole site is based on the forum.

Vito

[Wire]

Baseing your site around a forum to me is not worth it having to deal with expensive liscenses and style and total upkeep. However, if you have such a large database of clients its a lot easier to answer them in an forum.

[vito]

Well, actually, I can't think of anyone else who relies so heavily on a forum as httpme. Many others will have a forum, but it is a secondary part of the site. Httpme based the design of their site on the concept of "community". It seems to work for Bob, anyways.

Vito

[Wire]

Yes a nice wide community on your site will attract business but the company's with their forums that only have 1 post by them it doesn't look right. Just try your luck.

[vito]

I think that's a matter of how many customers you have. For instance, if you only have 50 customers, I think it's a bad idea to have a forum. It will be post-poor and it will look like a ghost town. It probably wouldn't be wise to start a forum until you had at least three or four hundred customers. Considering that only a portion of those would even register, 500 is still even too low.

Vito

[Wire]

Hmm I am currently designing a hosting site and was gonna go ahead and add support forums. Maybe a better idea not to. :(

[vito]

LOL, don't let me talk you out of it.

Just my 2 cents... :)

Vito

[Wire]

No your probably right thanks for the idea :D

[Chicken]

Regarding forums, I'd have to second Vito. It is also hard to tell if your customers will use a forum. Some types of customers just don't have time to post, but a younger or more active (web savvy) clientele might be more into it. Really hard to say what will fly and what won't and I've tried to figure it out. From my experience, it seems hit and miss.

[Dave]

Originally posted by Chicken
Regarding forums, I'd have to second Vito. It is also hard to tell if your customers will use a forum. Some types of customers just don't have time to post, but a younger or more active (web savvy) clientele might be more into it. Really hard to say what will fly and what won't and I've tried to figure it out. From my experience, it seems hit and miss. Love the chiken smiley!

[jolly]

Email is the first choice.....

:banana:

[SWR]

Originally posted by Chicken
. . . . . . From my experience, it seems hit and miss. We tried it a year and a half ago and took it down when no one used it. We put one back up a month ago; and are about ready to take it down again. I think it has to do with the customers we have. They require minimal support. We rarely get requests. Although, I would like to have an active forum; I think a dead forum is bad.

[beley]

I think most of the larger hosts use phone support in addition to an online ticket system. A lot of smaller hosts just use the online ticket system.

I've also seen email, and live support as well.

[vito]

Hmm. CDHost, you probably don't want to get on Chicken's bad side. You're breaking the rules in your sig. Rules say:

Signature:
Optional signature you may use to appear at bottom of your posts.
May be up to four lines and may not contain pricing or plan information

and your sig says "SPECIAL! $5.95/Month! Click Here!".

You may want to change that... ;)

Vito

[beley]

Oops... I thought it said, can not can't... honest mistake.

[vito]

I figured you just misread it. Happens to the best of us. ;)

Vito

[DigitalXWeb]

For us it is in this order :

HelpDesk / Email
Live Support
Phone Support (If needed in emergency situations)

[maxhest]

The most I get is via e-mail. Then Helpdesk, then AIM. Not bad since i am a small company :)

[xaviahost]

Hiya,

I have to tell you, the idea of having a forum is perfect for any sized host. We had one from day one, and yes it was a ghost town for a few days. But now we have posters that do there thing daily. The thing is hardly any of them use it for support, its just a community. I think putting one up has made our customer loyalty level go way up :)

[oritsfree]

Email is great for handling most things and then an email helpdesk or ticket system for everything else.

I think what would be great would be a set of forwarders. Email issues send it to this address. Customer gets an auto responder with the same questions answered that hundreads before have asked. If this fails then they can email support.

It would save so much time. (Pretty much a knowledge based auto responder.) Just to find the time to implement it.

[badjuju]

Since I'm relatively new and have a few clients, I use a help desk system. It's easy for anyone on my staff to view tickets and on thing I like in particular is it saves the info.

Every few months or so, I'll review the helpdesk tickets for the most popular questions and either add that to the FAQ or improve the FAQ explanation.

[Jan]

As a client, my previous host admin was best contacted on ICQ. My present one, a whole new setup for me, at first it was email, but sometimes I had to wait hours for a reply, so I thought, stuff this, I want to know how this works, so I got an MSN contact for them and that was brilliant. Now I use their support forum and that is usually addressed within 15 minutes. For stuff only they can fix, I use the support ticket. (took a while to figure out how to do that though :o: )

[badjuju]

Good idea. I might consider getting that. Just wanted a way of tracking all calls. I guess I can open a ticket when they contact me via IM.

[Alex[nl]]

One of my hosts uses a support script for tickets that also allows emailing; when I email him I get an auto repsonse a ticket is created. This seems the most perfecet solution, because things are tracked, you can add replies to the ticket (so all information is kept in one place instead of numerous e-mails with "Re: Re: Re:" headers). (eSupport by Kayako Web Solutions to be exact).

Next to that I like the support forums (on a 300+ customer host that is) that have a small community. It enables you to ask more questions then the simple host related ones (like on PHP programming problems f.e.) and it's a great resource (if you can vind the Search option ;)) that speeds up finding answers to your questions without even having to ask them.

[ZummiBear]

We use Livehelper and we haven't really advertised that we have it yet. Mostly we get a lot of phone calls as people tend to be impatient to wait for us to answer an email. They like the livehelper and I have a few that contact me via msn.....or one of my other chat programs. Depending on the type of problem....I do prefer that they come on the livehelper instead of emailing in. Its good to have more than one option available though.

[suppleSupport]

I use the helpdesk and forums equally. The forums do for most non-account-specific issues and the helpdesk for the rest. Works pretty well :)

[Binx]

The majority of our support is done through our customer area or e-mail. For us instant messaging is the worst for tracking support. We actually used ICQ for general support in 1997 and 1998 but discontinued its use after customers would send in work requests,plan addons, upgrades etc. It actually became a nightmare. Haven't tried support forums but my fear would be the same thing could occur with this method.

[Operator]

I would prefer to use help desk, you actually have time to think or consult with another staff buddy about the solution. The help desk is quickly followed by email, live support, and lastly forums :).

[101sales]

I'd say chat system and helpdesk are almost even.

Most of the questions asked by our customers are ones I can answer and many times I do. If they enter the chat system with a bigger problem that I can't give an answer to I ask that they open a trouble ticket.

I do prefer the helpdesk to the chat system however using the helpdesk for questions on setting up hosting accounts is a waste of time. Chat system works the best for that.

I've found that customers generally know what is a small or big problem and generally they use the correct form support.

[shaunewing]

We have the following support methods (in order of popularity):

- Helpdesk
- Email
- Phone
- Emergency Pager (very rarely used); this allows customers to fill out a form and have a message sent to one of our cell phones

We encourage customers to use the helpdesk as it allows us to track things better. Generally if a customer emails a support request we'll insert it into the helpdesk anyway.

Customers rarely call on the phone and lodge on average 1 support ticket per month each (I count email as support tickets). There are some clients who have been with us for months who we have never heard from apart from the original signup.

We had support forums. Only a few of our customers registered and it was dead so they were taken down. One day we'll give it another shot, but not just now.

We also tried IM support but were finding that customers were just contacting us for a general chat so we removed this.

--Shaun

[TimothyD]

Generally everything is handled through our helpdesk... Some users still e-mail us, but we just have it all piped into the desk anyway.