Giving Good Support to Customers Without Giving Away the Farm

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We’ve all run across angry customers on many hosting related forums, venting about their host’s terrible technical support. They expected hand-holding and they got email form letters, or they got no support at all.

But what is technical support? In the web hosting industry, particularly among the smaller hosts that are the largest sector of the industry, the customer defines what technical support means according to their own needs. Because there are no generally accepted standards for technical support and customer expectations are very high, there is a lot of room for confusion and dissatisfaction.

Small to medium web hosting providers are expected to provide a wide range of training, troubleshooting, development, debugging, and other assistance, under the umbrella of ‘technical support’. They often end up becoming the free Internet Help Desk for their customers. In the IT industry, this is referred to as ‘giving away the farm’. And it gives managers ulcers.

In most of the IT industry, technical support is clearly defined and organized. There are policies and procedures ensuring that an end user gets the support they are entitled to, without taking advantage of the system. When a request for support is made, these are tracked as ‘calls’ in call tracking systems with a database back-end such as Lotus Notes, MS Access, and Clarify, which allow monitoring and analysis of support usage and costs. This is critical, because support is a very expensive part of every company’s budget. Tools to control costs and anticipate trends can save large amounts of money, and prevent ulcers.

“demigods of Information Technology can be found reclining on couches being fed grapes by beautiful maidens”

Technical support is normally organized into levels. Level 1, is often referred to as “Front Line” or “Break/Fix” support. If it breaks, they fix it. Level 1’s have very general training, and use manuals with flowcharts to diagnose the problem, and determine if it is in fact the fault of the product or service the company provides. These low-level employees are chained to their phones, and are rated by how many calls they handle in a day, and how quickly they close them.

Not every customer that contacts a company’s Help Desk is reporting a problem that the company is required to handle. Another important responsibility of the Level 1 support analysts is to determine whether this is a legitimate support call, if the customer is asking for training, has contacted the wrong company, or if the problem is ‘pilot error’ or PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair). If it is not a legitimate support call, it’s not free. Most companies at this level offer a variety of methods of paying for ‘enhanced support’. 900 numbers, prepaid tech credits, hourly billing rates, and annual service plans are the most common.

If they can’t fix a legitimate problem, they escalate the call to Level 2. The support engineers at this level have much more specialized training. They are also much more expensive to have on staff than Level 1 support analysts. Somewhere between a galley slave and a demigod, Level 2’s enjoy more freedom than Level 1’s. They rarely talk to end users, and they tend to research and resolve the issues and then return the call to Level 1. The front line analysts contact the customer, let them know the problem has been fixed, and close the call.

If, for any reason, the problem is beyond the scope of the Level 2 engineers, then the call is escalated to Level 3. Often consultants, usually in the six figure salary range, Level 3 admins are well versed in the most arcane of technical lore. These demigods of Information Technology can be found reclining on couches being fed grapes by beautiful maidens, or, most likely, playing Quake. When a call comes in to their group, they have one last grape or frag one last monster, put their heads together briefly, resolve the issue, dispatch the call back to the lower levels, and depart for a 4-hour lunch.

As the call goes from level to level, the value of the call tracking system increases dramatically. Each person documents what they said, did, and researched, ensuring that no efforts are duplicated, and that the call isn’t ‘lost in the shuffle’. And because these systems are often integrated into applications used by the sales and customer service teams, they can see just how many times a given customer has lost their password or sent in equipment for replacement. Support call tracking is an important component of customer relationship management (CRM) and can highlight sales opportunities.

Even in small hosting companies, tech support can be more organized. Define technical support. Create a support policy, and make sure your customers know what they can expect and when. Make sure they know how to contact you. Post it all on your website. Offer them other options if they want ‘enhanced support’ and you have the ability to provide it. And stick to your policies. The hardest thing in the world is telling a customer that their problem is not your fault, and they need to pay up or hang up. Particularly if they don’t understand the nature of the problem. Don’t spend a lot of time explaining it to them, unless you want to give them the farm an acre at a time. Use a call tracking system.

At the Xensei Corporation, we only have a staff of 3, but all of us are veterans of corporate technical support, and so we manage our support in keeping with the standards used in the rest of the IT industry. We have our support policies and options clearly posted on our web site, and we mail copies of that information to all new customers. We provide enhanced support free for the first 30 days, and after that, break/fix only. Customers needing enhanced support beyond that, have a choice of 3 different service plans: business hours only, 24/7, and proactive.

This has allowed us to keep from becoming the free Internet Help Desk for our customers. It’s also put us in a position to give a high level of support to customers who need it. We use a call tracking system developed in house, which is integrated into our billing system for CRM purposes. It’s not easy in a company as small as ours, but it keeps our support costs down, and allows us to spend our time focusing on bringing in revenue instead of giving away the farm.

For more information visit:

The Association of Support Professionals

The lighter side of technical support

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