24/7 fake or bull?

We offer 24/7/365 support. Yes, we have real, live people working round the clock to handle support issues.

HOWEVER

What most people fail to realize is that there is a difference between availability and response time. Just because support is AVAILABLE 24/7, doesn't mean they will have a 30 second RESPONSE TIME. There are other people in line too, you know. The longer response times doesn't necessarily reflect upon the worthiness of the host, either. Some are outsourced and are handling more than one host's support requests.

Also, read the support terms. Most hosts have 24/7 TECH support dealing with server issues. Sales and Billing support, which isn't such and immediate priority, may not be 24/7
 
It is not right that all hosts offer 24/7/365 support. However, there are hosts offering this service. We have around 80 employees and we are available round the clock. Similarly, there are other hosts too :)
 
James-A said:
It is not right that all hosts offer 24/7/365 support. However, there are hosts offering this service. We have around 80 employees and we are available round the clock. Similarly, there are other hosts too :)
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You must agree your company is less reachable on non-office times.
 
Profithost said:
You must agree your company is less reachable on non-office times.
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Why would he agree to that?
There are no "office times" with an online business.
It's international so 5pm where you are is mid day somewhere else.

You either have 24/7 support or you don't.
 
Blue said:
Why would he agree to that?
There are no "office times" with an online business.
It's international so 5pm where you are is mid day somewhere else.

You either have 24/7 support or you don't.
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Since our company is based in the US, we have eastern time zone phone support 9-5, however our 24/7 support via online chat and tickets are 24/7
 
Profithost said:
You must agree your company is less reachable on non-office times.
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Well, I think you have never visited our Live Chat. You may try to enable a chat session with any of our departments. I agree that it might take sometime for our employees to take/accept chat depending on the work load or number of chats they are handling at that time. However, you will reach us :)
 
It really depends on the size of the company I think and also how many people are employed to be support assistants.

For instance, the smaller websites that only employ one or two people to be support and answer emails will be a lot slower to answer support tickets unless the community is small as well.

Bigger websites usually have the money to employ more people but generally have a larger userbase so you may end up waiting anyway.

I think in any case, the company should be able to estimate how long it will take a person to respond to emails and be able to follow this. I don't know how many questions I have sent to support about their services only to either A.) Never get a response or B.) Have to wait a week when the site promises a 24 hour response.

I think 24/7 support can only apply to chat support at best, and even then, that person has to go to sleep sometime!
 
I think 24/7 support can only apply to chat support at best, and even then, that person has to go to sleep sometime!
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That may be true in a one man shop, but plenty of providers, including us, have multiple support personnel on live chat 24/7/365 and offer 800 phone support 24/7. :D
 
Even some smaller companies can offer 24/7 support, but of course some response times will be shorter than others. Support by email is likely to be slower than support by phone, since one checks email at whatever times, but one generally answers the phone when it rings.
 
I think there's some confusion was to what 24x7 support means. Just because someone submits a trouble ticket doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get a response in a few minutes (although it is possible and makes for excellent customer service :-) !.
And based on the type of problem, it could be moved up or down the queue of other tickets submitted. I would expect server problems (where it's down, crashing, intermittently available) would be resolved sooner than general non-critical requests.
 
Unfortunately, there are many providers that claim 24x7 support but do not actually offer it. If possible, it is smart to try submit a ticket to them in the early morning (ie. 3 or 4 AM) to see how quickly they can respond.
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I agree you should test them out.
 
I'm agree with you. Many companies write about 24/7 support, for more clients and you need to choose, but i really like <URL snipped> :)
 
What do you guys think is the best way to offer support? I am part of a new hosting company and we want to offer the best support we can to our customers.. any advice?
 
AdamLaw said:
What do you guys think is the best way to offer support? I am part of a new hosting company and we want to offer the best support we can to our customers.. any advice?
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That will depend on your target market.

Some people are content with a ticket system, others want a ticket system and live chat, others want telephone support.

We have and continue to resist phone support (other than sales), we like having a written record for later follow up if need be and ticket/chat allows us to prioritize the tickets based upon the issue involved.

The important part is not to over-extend. If you have phone support you need to have enough staffing to handle the phones and still get to the issues and resolve the problems. You can read a ticket a lot faster than you can solve an issue while continuing a conversation with a client.
 
The way we work it is our helpdesk is guaranteed 24/7 but livechat and phone are not. However we man them as much as possible.
 
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