Outsourced Support

[Chris]

Hello,

Does anyone have any feedback regarding the two following outsourced support companies?

1. H-Sphere Support - http://www.hspheresupport.com

2. ACT Support - http://www.actsupport.com/technicalsupport.htm

If you currently use one of these companies, can you please post the following:

- How quickly do they respond to customers issues?

- Are they reliable?

- Can they answer questions with enough knowledge to cover technical questions for your customers?

- How long have you been dealing with them?

- Do you use them for any other services that they may provide (security patches/server admin, etc. )?

- Non-Compete Agreement, do they sign something that prevents them from marketing to your customer base, because these two companies have their own hosting company as well. Do you have any issues with them having their own hosting companies?

If you can provide any information, either positive or negative, or both, about these companies I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks.

-Chris

<<ADMIN NOTE: Similar thread: http://hosthideout.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95 >>

[shost]

Hi,
I haven't used hshpere , but I have used actsupport for a number of months.
I would not reccommend them though.

They were good in the beginning, but I had to stop using them because they stopped showing me that they had any techs. They would respond fast and say:
we have received your ticket and will reply at the soonest

Then never heard anything back........... that happened a lot at the end.

Tim L

[Chris]

So you terminated services with them?

Have you found another company to handle your outsourced support?

-Chris

[shost]

Hi,
Yes,, I had to terminate with them, becasue they weren't doing anything anyway at that point. No joke, 2o some odd tickets with no reply but we will get back to you at the soonest....

I have just started using http://acrolive.com . They seem ok so far, but as I said.. we "just" started using them. They are doing our ticket work only right now, with a little admin side work but haven't used them full force yet... I am still testing the waters with them, and them with us.
It takes a little time to get used to helping a new host, and it has only been a week or two so far. But I am not dissapointed with them :-)

Tim L

[Mark]

I work with another hosting company that uses bobcares and I've noticed the same thing. To satisfy their "1 hour quick response guarantee" they post "Hi, We have forwarded your issue to the concerned department. They will be contacting you." and they move the ticket to the corresponding department in the help desk. They are great otherwise, but those kind of replies are useless and clutter the tickets.

[Cyberland]

I had the same problem with ActSupport. I terminated our account with them this month. We signed up with them about three months ago. During this time period, they only had two decent responses to help tickets that were filed. The rest of the responses were something you might expect from a junior high school student.

[Chicken]

That's interesting as I've seen ActSupport touted here and elsewhere. Guess the old saying, "If you want somethign done right, you gotta do it yourself!" comes into play here. I have to say, I'd be a bit worried outsourcing support, but then again you'd have to be as concerned with internal support help as well I suppose.

[Andrew]

Sorry for late response, just joined this particular forum.

We've been using hsphere support for about 9 months.

Their response time is good and is truely 24 hour.

Their service includes security, patches and DB backups.

Extra's are expensive (High hourly rate), but we have been able to go directly to psoft for some of this stuff, so hasnt been too bad.

Overall.... Good Service and worth the money

[alchiba]

I was one who touted ACTSupport right here in these forums a while back. They were fantastic when I first started with them, but the last month or so they've been pulling the "We'll get back to you" trick. So I have to spend much more time riding herd on tickets. Sort of defeats the purpose, eh?

A former Bobcares guy pinged me on AIM looking for work but I wasn't ready for him. Too bad I forgot his name. I'm considering just doing a couple direct hires and getting away from the outsourcing. Too problematic.

[alex042]

Has anyone tried bytetechnology.net, cheetaweb.com, or esupportpro.com?

[Spencer]

I hear good things about ACTSupport.com and BobCares.com. However, I've never used either.

[NetxMan]

I have seen maybe one good post about both of those companies, but about 30 post basically saying the samething, that has been posted in this post.

[shost]

Well,
After having time to evaluate and stop using arcolive support ... I post to let you know.

NOTE: the "stopped using" part of the first sentence. Telling my true feelings would be close to liable or slander.

Tim L

[Chicken]

Explaining exactly what happened and your experiences wouldn't be though.

[etecc]

so much for good support at http://acrolive.com... there is not even a phone number to call. Or anyone on live chat...

[alex042]

I hear good things about ACTSupport.com and BobCares.com.
I've heard the same, but neither will support adult servers so I haven't tried them.

[LiftNw8]

I have heard both good and bad about actsupport and bobcares, but the only reason why I didn't go with them is that they don't support adult hosts, and I do primarily adult hosting.

On the other hand I have talked to esupportpro.com and they will support adult hosts. I intend to contact them again in the next month or two and begin using them for support.

[alex042]

On the other hand I have talked to esupportpro.com and they will support adult hosts. I intend to contact them again in the next month or two and begin using them for support.
I was thinking the same thing for the same reasons. Were you planning on going with just the frontend helpdesk support plan and/or the backend admin support plan?

[LiftNw8]

Right now just going to go with the front end support plan, need someone to take the heat off with tech support so that I can have some more time to myself and to work on developing some good marketing.

[FastNetServers]

Well the best thing to do would be investing in your own in house support and that is what I did...now I even have the option of providing anonymous technical support to my resellers clients for a nominal fee :)

If anyone has any questions about having in house technical support please feel free to ask me...or if you need a more economical way for tech support ask me...I could help you out ;)

[LiftNw8]

I think that the best reason for having outsourced tech support is the reason why I am looking into it, my business is just me, and the business currently doesn't earn enough money to support me adding a staff, but it earns enough money to add outsourced support that will then allow me to have 24/7 support, something which I do not have now, I currently support my customers only between the hours of around 7 am until 11 pm, a guys got to sleep sometime and all.

[GChurch]

I agree with David - Outsourcing is the only option if you are small and want to sleep!

[LiftNw8]

I have been using now for 2 weeks esupportpro.com, and they have been doing a fantastic job at this point. It allows me to sleep better at night knowing someone is their to answer the problems my customers might have over night and when I can't answer.

[GandalfDDUK]

Hi, used Actsupport but myself but since moved on, if you are still looking send an email to trexine@trexine.net and tell them GandalfDDUK sent you, that way you will get a good offer that some of the others can't even come close to.

[Adam]

Thanks for that referral deal :)

[LiftNw8]

Just an update, have now been using esupportpro.com for 1 month, and they have handled all my customers requests very well and very quickly, so I recommend them highly at this point.

[Robert]

Originally posted by Liftin.com:

Just an update, have now been using esupportpro.com for 1 month, and they have handled all my customers requests very well and very quickly, so I recommend them highly at this point.

Seems like they charge a monthly fee based on the number of domains you have on your server. That is, if I'm reading it right.

Kind of expenses IMO. Especially when only a few need help and others don't.

[alex042]

Kind of expenses IMO. Especially when only a few need help and others don't.
What solution do you prefer? A flat fee per server or something else?

[Robert]

Originally posted by alex042:

What solution do you prefer? A flat fee per server or something else?

More like purchasing tickets. Like 0-50 tickets would be $xx.xx/mo. 51-100 would be xxx.xx/mo. 101-150 would be xxx.xx and so on and so on.

or .25 cents a ticket. 10 cents a ticket. etc.

[LiftNw8]

If I could find someone that was charging that little per ticket I would surely be using them, but the flat fee per month is ok with me for the time being, it frees me from dealing with the silly stuff that people put in tickets for, that I had to deal with in the past.

[Karen]

doesn't ehostcare.com offer per ticket plans?

Karen

[LiftNw8]

I hadn't heard of them, my problem has been that some of these places don't mess with folks who host adult sites, esupportpro doesn't care about the kinds of sites I host. That is the primary reason I went with them, as both bobcares and actsupport turned me away because of the adult site thing.

[Robert]

No Doubt.

I guess because you are also a porn host. But I mean, if I had 500 static pages and I had only 50-100 tickets a month. Would it be fair if I was paying for all 500 accounts. I don't.

[LiftNw8]

Robert you make a good point for sure, but at $2 per ticket at ehostcares.com that is out of the question, I have some folks that put in support tickets for some simple stuff, and I would have burned up far more than the $60 I am paying now rather quickly because of that. Right now I am pretty small, and am hosting less than 100 sites, so I am good with that pricing for now, I am sure that in the future as growth continues I will begin searching for another option.

[Karen]

Have you ever noticed that it is the *same* clients that open support tickets? I rarely get a support ticket, but when I do I can almost always guess at who the sender is.

I agree with Robert. Why pay for hundreds of tickets when they will never be used.

Karen

[Robert]

Originally posted by Karen:

Have you ever noticed that it is the *same* clients that open support tickets? I rarely get a support ticket, but when I do I can almost always guess at who the sender is.

I agree with Robert. Why pay for hundreds of tickets when they will never be used.

Karen

Some clients are ticket happy. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not uncommon for me to get 5 tickets within an hour from the same client. All, of course, are related.

For example, user doesn't read any FAQ/welcome emails/forums to find out that he needs to use hisemail@hisdomain.com as the username to check his mail. So he opens a ticket.

2 minutes later, he opens another one to why he can't check his webmail (same issue).

2 minutes later, he opens another one to why he can't FTP (same issue).

2 minutes later, he can't access his domain (it's a new domain).

These all these answers are in our FAQ, forum, welcome email.. you name it.. it's there.

Oh well. Keeps them happy.

[FHDave]

Originally posted by GChurch:

I agree with David - Outsourcing is the only option if you are small and want to sleep!

Actually, quite a few large companies outsource. Walmart outsources some of its workers. Enron outsourced the whole of its Financial/Accounting department, so I hear.

I would like to outsource too, but I just can't believe they can provide the quality of support as I demand/expect. And thus, so far we pay all of our support technicians/admins in house, and that's very costly, unfortunately. However, our customers love them :)

Thank you for the great thread.

[Robert]

AOL Outsources
Linksys
Netgear

[alchiba]

U.S. Department of Defense

[FHDave]

heh, what people/job does US DOD outsource? :)

[Robert]

lol of the US DOD outsourced.. lol I'd be scared.

Unless you mean for construction of armed vechicles, airplanes, buildings, etc.

[alchiba]

Originally posted by Robert:
lol of the US DOD outsourced.. lol I'd be scared.


Um, if it weren't outsourced I'd be scared.

Originally posted by Robert:
Unless you mean for construction of armed vechicles, airplanes, buildings, etc.

IT, clerical, software development, project management. . . almost any area there's a need and justification (except management/executive) and a good entrepeneur has a foothold. A government contractor is nothing more than an outsourcing company.

Let's add two other biggies to the mix: NASA and Dept. of Commerce.

[FHDave]

hm, I don't think they are outsourced. No way ... You will need a strict government clearance in order to do some sensitive stuffs, say software development for long range missile?

[alchiba]

Originally posted by FHDave:
No way ... You will need a strict government clearance in order to do some sensitive stuffs

Happens all the time. It has to in order for the govt to get anything done. A buddy of mine works as a contractor at the Naval Surface Weapons Lab in Va. He calls himself an arms dealer for the federal govt and he a top secret clearance is required for him to do his job. My next door neighbor was a contract stenographer for the White House under Bill Clinton and traveled with him wherever he went, transcribing every statement he made as part of the official record (yes, she routinely flew on Air Force One and no, she never met Monica Lewinsky. :D). She had a fairly high clearance, too, and my wife and I got annual visits from the the guys in the black Chevy Suburbans checking up on her when her clearance came up for renewal. From my own experience, I used to do some work for a govt. agency and had to have a special clearance even before they were allowed to give me directions to the building.

All this sounds heavy and serious, but around here it's pretty routine and business-as-usual. So, you'll find outsourced labor in many sensitive areas of the government.

[waicsco]

Agreed, the government is hugely outsourced. For instance, my buddy worked for the United Space Alliance in Houston. His boss was from NASA, but his pay came from the USA contact with NASA.

You need to remember that they don't give security clearance to just anyone. Their are thorough background checks, among other tests to determine credibility. Hence to a qualifying person, a level of security clearance is given...and they can go to work, either in the military, support jobs, or as gov't contractors.

[niyogi]

We are currently operating the outsourced tech support services for a fairly large hosting company in the US - things have been running smoothly.

Based on past experience, we have run into customers that expect us to magically understand their methods of customer service when it requires time, energy, and proper communication from both parties to achieve this. This is exactly what was done with the company we are working for.

Roj

[Hurga]

Outsourced support is near unavoidable these days. If the company's quite big, they'll have a call center in another country. If the company's a one man operation, then you'll end up calling the larget company's outsourced tech support.

These days it's best to go with a mid range to small provider as they won't have the funds or time to outsource their call center.

Netsol, AOL, Dell, and now Earthlink (except for their atlanta center) are outsourcing their call centers to India and the Philippines.

[PWS]

Anybody using/used http://www.supportresort.com/
They seem reasonable and all I need is very basic support when nobody else is available. The "how do I create an Email" or "I can't remember how to see my stats" type things. That's about 90% of it. I like that their tickets are good for 3 months because I never know when or how much I will need them.
Good or bad if you have first hand experience I'd like to know.

Some people like Bobcares but they are higher and their web site was down 2 hours while I was trying to check them out...I didn't like that much.
Tripod looks good for 24/7/365 but I think a per ticket system would be better for me since I never know when I will need it.

[romsourcing]

You could try to hire an individual or two from Eastern Europe if you can not afford to hire a company to do the job. They know what is cool and what is not .. ;)

[Cyberland]

Over the past two years we have used three different companies for our support desk, ActSupport being one (can not remember the name of the other). They were fine for about a month and then it seemed their responses to some of our support tickets were made by individuals who did not know what they were taking about. The third one… Well, read on…

About four months ago we found another company called logicsupport.com. We had actually been using this company for about a year as they were handling support for one of our reseller’s accounts that we use to have through another company. The techs from logicsupport were doing such a good job in answering our questions for our reseller account that we decided to hire them for our support desk and to manage our servers.

Before posting any comments about this company, I wanted to make sure they continued to provide the support that I expect of such a company. I can now say that the techs for this company have provided complete and accurate answers to all of our customer support questions. They have responded to support tickets within 30 minutes. And another very nice feature is that their support tickets are very reasonable, plus they DO NOT expire.

We are very pleased with this company and would recommend them to anyone that might be interested in outsource support.

[HostMerit]

I have used Support Resort for about a month now. They've been nothing but excellent from the support. When you sign up, you get your own 'Hub' support panel, where you fill in information/etc for techs doing techs, it's a brilliant idea, and has helped greatly answering questions techs would usually have to email me for. All of their responses are thorough, detailed, and unlike other outsourcing companies, they accually answer the right question without the customer having to correct them on what they're asking. They also deal with complex problems, database modifying, and software support for my customers, like I have never seen. After they fixed an advanced PHP list bouncing problem, which most other techs, etc wouldn't understand, I got a reply from the customer

'Thanks so much!!! I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all of the help
your company has given me. I have had web sites since 1993 and I think, hands
down, you are the BEST HOST I have ever had. If I ever switch it will be
because YOU shut down yourself or I die, LOL! I will never recommend another host
to anyone again!'


It will be a long time until I move outsourced companies again, I'm building on on their plans, hopefully to the point of dedicated techs :banana:

[Cyberland]

I thought the SupportResort name looked familiar. This is the second company I used after ActSupport. Their responses to questions in our support desk were great for the first month. After that, it went down hill. Plus, their block of tickets expire after 3 months.

[drmike]

Originally posted by PWS:

Anybody using/used http://www.supportresort.com/



They don't support adult sites though. *sigh*


I wish Tripod would fix their site so I could take a look at their site. :)

-drmike

[Gregory-Eric]

This thread has been pretty informative. It seems like there are some, if just a few, good outsourcing companies worth giving a shot.
Would have to test them for a while, kind of paranoid about handing the support over to people I just don't know. Any tips on how to interview one of these kinds of companies?

[PWS]

One way is to try their sales & support. I quickly dropped onecompany with an attractive "package" from my list when my questions to them were taking 8-14 hours for replies that didn't really answer my questions well. I'm sure not going to pay so my customers can wait 10 hours for a "canned" response. :rolleyes:

[DANICH.com]

They don't even have a website :yikes:
All I see is a No Title page with 4 chat icons that are all offline

I guess hiring your own techs is the best way to go about this :star:

so much for good support at http://acrolive.com... there is not even a phone number to call. Or anyone on live chat...

[LetsFly]

Does anyone have any updates to companies like Actsupport?

In the last few weeks, I have been researching companies to do handle our sales calls during off hours, holidays and when we are busy etc...

I got quotes from about 4 companies, of them, Act Support which was at the top of the list until I seen these posts (from 2003 however). What sets my request apart is the fact that this is a call center quote and nothing where they have to login to our desk and answer tickets etc....big difference

We use angel.com for a while now, which gives you a menu for customers, voice mail, automatic scheduling etc...so the ablity for us to route calls is easily implimented

Heres companies I found so far

1. Act Support - They seem to have a big grasp on Cpanel related host's which is why they sit at #1 with me. I like the idea of the call center being able to handle level 1 support and put tickets into queue...Their prices range from from $400 to $1000 per month anywhere from 100 to unlimited calls & chats ($1000 per month being a sole 12 hour CSR for your company)

2. 24-7 INTouch - So far, we have had 2 phone convos with them and went over their pricing, they can handle both calls and online chat. They did state they had (or have) hosting companies as customers. Bascially the way they handle calls is though the info you send them, along with the site info.... They would also include a free toll free number with the services. They have a site their agents use which has stuff like "Top 10 FAQ" etc...Their prices range from $250 for 300 minutes $375 for 500 minutes up to $5000 per month for 2000 minutes and go off a per minute system

3. Tele-Direct - sent me a quote bascially same lines with #2, their prices range from $500 ($500 setup fee & $500 deposit) for 500 minutes per month....

[linux-tech]

If you're going to outsource your support, there are quite a few things to look for.

A> is the company even IN the target country you're going for?
Too many times I've called companies (including some of the larger fortune 500 companies) to get *boggle* outsourced customer support from India who spoke very rugged english, and didn't understand the language at all. Talk about a huge embarassment for the company itself. Every time I get someone like that, I cancel the account immediately. I shouldn't have to spend my precious time trying to get the person supporting me to understand what I'm saying, due to a language barrier.

B> How is their support?
Obviously you don't want to give your clients piss poor customer support. These people are representing your company, you want them to actually provide decent support.

C> What are their response times?
An hour is good, 5 hours is good, depending on the request and time it was submitted. As long as the requests get answered in a timely fashion, and emergencies are handled quickly, then it's all good.

D> How Competent are they in Linux?
If you've got Linux servers (or Windows), you will eventually need them to do something in those areas. I've run across support people who just flat out refuse to handle the server itself, which is ridiculous (of course, it makes my job a bit harder to do as well, but I'm used to that ;)). I've run across on the other hand people who are too fluent and insist that the servers that I administrate be run their way, which is just not happening ;) . It's a fine line, but it can be met.

All in all, outsourcing can be good, if the company is well reputed. Do your homework, do the research before you throw your customers at these guys.

[TSSeanR]

I would have to say that the reasons you outsource are highly congruent with the results you are going to get from the company that you end up selecting for your outsourcing.

If you're looking for a cheap easy way to provide responses to your clients then maybe an overseas company is the way to go. You're going to get the most bang for your buck, but you have to compromise on customer satisfaction.

If you're looking for technical expertise that suprasses what you're going to find in most places its going to cost more than what most overseas firms charge. I think that overseas firms in general lower the market's perception of what an acceptable price point is, then people get upset when they are asked to pay pricing congruent with the economy in the U.S. or Europe.

Not to say that all of the Indian firms are bad. I have a high level of respect for several operations, especially Bobcares.

If you've ever had to hire, train and motivate your own employees you might consider paying more than it would cost to do yourself just to have someone else handle the headache for you.

I will say that some outsourcing teams will surpass the support that most inhouse teams can provide.

-Sean

[eSupport.org.ua]

Hi!

Does surprise me, why you all associate the concept of outsource with India? There are other countries habitants of which well educated and have large skill in software development. I mean Russia and Ukraine.
Unfortunately now in Ukraine the political changes and banks is the wrecking. But I hope, indeed, I very hope that when it will all make off and banks will be reopened, you will pay attention to Ukraine.
Very strong background, due to the saved system of secondary education do developers able to write a high-quality code.
Average salary of programmer at us 200$ in a month - 2400$ in a year. Other side are managers of projects. It is successful self-taught persons. At us nobody teaches to such. On it they are forced studies or to drive out in other countries.
They will work minimum after 800$.
Thus, if you need the large set of developers and one manager of projects - will pay attention to Ukraine.

Best Regards,
Andrey

[Brian S]

Thus, if you need the large set of developers and one manager of projects - will pay attention to Ukraine.And how are their English skills?

Brian

[eSupport.org.ua]

And how are their English skills?

Brian

The project managers have very nice skills. You meeting with manager, and manager work with developers.

[hybricom]

Reading these threads really surprises me sometimes on how some Outsourced support companies actually process tickets. Recently we worked with a support vendor and a client of ours for about 2 weeks. I am not going to mention the names of these support companies as this is not my purpose to bash. During this experience though, a ticket would come in and the response time would be good but the response would be "We are looking into the problem and will get back to you soon.". Well to my surprise not only did they not get back to them soon but they didn't get back to them at all. I bring this example up because we take serious action to reply with an answer as quickly as possible and if a response is needed that states we are looking into it, it means our techs really are, and you will have resolution soon. I think this just makes sense as a service our clients pay us for. This is just one of those situations that put hard working companies under the same bad wraps as other support companies that only focus on their large clients. We take the perspective that every ticket that comes in is one of our clients and not one of our clients customers.

[niyogi]

I'm going to tout in on this thread and speak the honest truth. My true advice is to stay away from outsourced support unless you are serious about working with the folks that will be working on your support team. The story is common where an outsourced support company will flatter and impress during the first few weeks only to dwindle later on.

The reason is because attrition rate is hard to beat (regardless us what any outsourced support provider says in a thread like this to sound different). Things generally get "boring" after a while to the support *techs* that are actually doing the support for the hosting clients. Sure, you might get a comforting email from the big boss (the same guys that chime in in the forums) but that doesn't cover the situation under the hood.

It's much better when long-term relations are forged with one or two individual support techs that you know you can count on because they're working for you and nobody else. Rapport is established and respect is developed.

Roj

[eSupport.org.ua]

It's much better when long-term relations are forged with one or two individual support techs that you know you can count on because they're working for you and nobody else. Rapport is established and respect is developed.

Roj


Very right noticed.
Exactly that is why eSupport is team of the individuals from Ukraine. And already not only from Ukraine and from other countries also.
We will work only one customer and never fail! :wave:

[niyogi]

You work for only one customer? I'm a bit confused in this respect.

Roj

[eSupport.org.ua]

You work for only one customer? I'm a bit confused in this respect.

Roj

Lol! I don't work. I found outsourced workers in my institute and recive money for this. I am HR :)