Using a Forum as a support

Forums are helpful in providing additional information to clients about products and services as well as any maintenance and potential network issues. Forums also lend a certain level of transparency as to how a company is operating and the level of client satisfaction. Additionally, with social media in play, users want to be able to have as many platforms as possible to to get assistance or ask general questions overall.
 
coloradojaguar said:
Forums are helpful in providing additional information to clients about products and services as well as any maintenance and potential network issues. Forums also lend a certain level of transparency as to how a company is operating and the level of client satisfaction. Additionally, with social media in play, users want to be able to have as many platforms as possible to to get assistance or ask general questions overall.
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Yes for user to user community assistance/advice, but to request specific server/account support requests then these should be done direct with host via ticket/phone/email. a Forum is not the place for a host to provide specific support to clients.
 
We don't use forum as support option because it may disclose private information. We only take support from emails or tickets.
 
Forum is a added advantage for support, but you cannot replace helpdesk support with forum. Through forum you can provide an alert regarding some sort of major issue your are currently facing. Also can update the same forum thread as the common resolutions ,so customers can avoid to raise a ticket. Also note that the issues raised it forum cannot be neglected and it should be resolved in limited time, or else it will cause negative impact on host. If a forum is much active you should highly keep an eye on each post made in forum,since low quality services, downtime all will get reflected in forums, hence your forum itself ruins your business. Note that if you have shift supervisors for your technical support department, you should make them to monitor forum posts and to reply in better manner, hence your forum will be much good for your bussiness.
 
Id' have to look back at it, but HTTPME.com used to only offer support via forums and they did very, very well. They had a very interesting model... Since that time they've sold and Rob (owner) has sold and moved onto other ventures, but I thought it was very novel.

At that time they were really the only ones trying to do what they were doing with a forum only (i.e. they didn't have a special landing page or any product pages that weren't a part of vBulletin). It would be interesting to pick Rob's brain and see what his feelings were about that model of support.

It has worked and it worked successfully. It's probably worth noting that, at that time, he was only offering CPanel reseller accounts and I think VPS at a later time. Maybe forum-only isn't appropriate for every line of business? I don't know.
 
wh-coach said:
Id' have to look back at it, but HTTPME.com used to only offer support via forums and they did very, very well. They had a very interesting model... Since that time they've sold and Rob (owner) has sold and moved onto other ventures, but I thought it was very novel.

At that time they were really the only ones trying to do what they were doing with a forum only (i.e. they didn't have a special landing page or any product pages that weren't a part of vBulletin). It would be interesting to pick Rob's brain and see what his feelings were about that model of support.

It has worked and it worked successfully. It's probably worth noting that, at that time, he was only offering CPanel reseller accounts and I think VPS at a later time. Maybe forum-only isn't appropriate for every line of business? I don't know.
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Offering support only via forums doesn't really sound like a good move to me regardless of how well it worked out for a specific company. I can imagine the extra added headaches in terms of verification, privacy etc

Either way, they now do have a helpdesk so I guess they agree with my statement somewhat.
 
My website <snipped>, has a live support and will have a forum, my idea and goal for the forum is that I want clients to suggest what I can make hosting a better place and satisfy the customers also they can communicate with other customers.
 
StonHost said:
My website <snipped>, has a live support and will have a forum, my idea and goal for the forum is that I want clients to suggest what I can make hosting a better place and satisfy the customers also they can communicate with other customers.
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As you're just starting out I'd recommend against the forum. Very few clients will use it if any and an empty forum can be damaging.
 
Forum is a good platform to interact with your clients and to receive more visitors by posting technical solutions but it is not a good portal for providing support. Ticket system is the best option as everything is documented for your and customer's record.
 
mikho said:
Using a forum as a support channel is a nice addon to your company, but it requires a lot of hard work to keep going.

Like many others have said, a dead forum is bad publicity for your company. On the other hand, a working, active forum is one of the best ways to make a company "famous" along its customers and even potential customers.

So it goes both ways. If you decide to keep it, make it look active. Post offers or giveaways so that your customers comes back, even if they don't have a problem.

Also make sure that the forum is NOT a replacement for your helpdesk/ticket system. Only a place to get general help from people who also like what they are doing, being a customer of you :)
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+1. A forum takes more of the time than answering support tickets. It also aids others and reduce the load on the regular support staff.

The downside is spam and moderation. It requires regular monitoring.
 
We believe that a good up to date knowledge base and a live chat/ticket system is better than a forum.

A forum is open to abuse unless you lock it down, at which point it becomes a knowledge base anway,
 
hostsurfuk said:
We have had forums in the past however these didn't take off and very hard to police. Open to a lot of abuse too.
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The same with us, it didn't work out well because of abuse. If you have a well maintained Knowledge Base on your site it works out much better. Keep track of the questions you get thru your support tickets and post your answers in your knowledge base. This also has the effect of cutting down on your support requests.
 
Forum is good when you have a very active one and you really take it as a feedback to improve your services and products...but if you will only have it to each client support the other, thats not a good thing nor a guarantee that a client knowledge or solutions is the correct one....for me sounds like simply try to drop the ball instead to give the client desired support...over ticket is the best, you have time to check the problem and give it a just to the point fix/solution.
 
Forums not a good idea anymore, but if you really want to do something like client2client support, you can even go for a IRC Channel with a web client on your website
 
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