Social media support in the hosting business

I

izumi777

Member
Anyone host here using social media to support their clients? I am not quite a fan of social media but they are becoming popular that many of my hosting customers request support via Facebook, LINE, etc. Our hosting company has no choice but to support via Facebook messengers.

It's true that these social networks help marketing your web hosting business by feeding news and promotions to followers. However, supporting via Facebook is never easy. For general inquires, it is a fairly good platform but when it comes to specific support it is hard to verify the ownership of the account. Moreover, messages are not group in topics or categories as in support ticket system so it is hard to read, search and manage.

We are using WHMCS to manage our hosting services. I wish there were a plugin to integrate Facebook to WHMCS not just signing-in via Facebook but cover a full integration. Actually, you can integrate Facebook to Kayako and then integrate Kayako to WHMCS but it would be nicer to integrate Facebook directly to WHMCS. LINE is also a problem. There ain't any plugin for WHMCS to integrate with LINE or just login via LINE. Developing your own plugins for your hosting company is never easy as these social networks update their API frequently and you need to always keep your code up-to-date.

Any hosting business here has any problem with social media supporting ?
And how you cope with them ?
 
When I ran hosting, I never supported via Social Medai, and today, when I need help, I don't use social media.

We ran Live Chat on our servers 24/7, so there was always a way to reach out. That Live Chat was integrated with our billing (WHMCS) so as they typed, it would populate FAQ suggestions, and we could easily link to articles. Also, since it integrated with WHMCS, we could verify that the user was fully paid etc.

We used Kayako I think it was, and also LiveZilla for many many years.

Social media is good for answering a "do you support" type question, but the moment the person actually needs support, that should be taken out of the public eye and put into direct communication.

Similar with Forums. I'm all for how to type things, but if there's something specific with a particular account, that shouldn't be public information.

Today, while we offer design & SEO, we no longer provide a Live Chat type environment, and anything submitted on Facebook is quickly funneled into a ticket in our system.

At the end of the day, even if a user wants a specific thing, it's your job to funnel them into the correct support method for faster and accurate responses. 9 times out of 10, if you say "faster responses" or "accurate responses" they will have no problem moving over to the REAL support system.
 
I, along with Conor, prefer not to share support over social media platforms. Privacy is a huge concern for most folks today.
 
Just create a social media page and add some candid reply to it.
When ever customer asks some thing it may regarding sales or support it will notify you.
For support use mail id system like (support@yourcomanydomain.com)
 
The only social we provide support on is Discord, we've set a proper ticketing system and it is as great as normal tickets.
 
Not really no, it is a big security issue to do that. We will reply to the odd message that is not support related, but ticket is best to authenticate.
 
i do provide basic support through social media(Knowledge base - article tutorials etc) but for anything else a ticker or using the in house live chat system is required, for security and privacy reasons
 
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