Archives for 2005

Christoph Puetz · November 27, 2005

Book: The Web Hosting Manager

A new book about starting a web hosting business has become available. "The Web Hosting Manager" is a step by step guide about how to start a web hosting business.

See it at Amazon.com: The Web Hosting Manager

Book Description
"The Web Hosting Manager" is the one-stop business guide when starting a new web hosting business. This book is also targeted at existing web hosting businesses that are lacking customers and need to pick up "steam". Jumpstarting a new or existing web hosting business with the knowledge from this book is easy. This non-technical book guides the reader from the very beginning of starting a web hosting business to implementing highly sophisticated marketing strategies. This book is invaluable for the beginner and the pro.

Product Details

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Lulu Press (October, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 1411653149

Christoph Puetz · November 13, 2005

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Christoph Puetz · November 11, 2005

1 year Web Hosting Resource Kit

About a year ago the idea for Webhostingresourcekit.com was born. I had already operated the Webhostingreport.net with web hosting related information. Overall the website at that time was asking for a better concept. I decided to use a different domain name which would be a little more descriptive (= www.webhostingresourcekit.com) and I also decided to move from Open Source software to a paid Content Management product. Most of the content would come from Webhostingreport.net to get the site of the ground.

In early December the new website went live. The initial response from visitors was very good and has carried on until today. Overall the site hit the market with limited competition, but it seemed like that shortly after the initial launch of my site that several other sites targeting the same market segment were launched. Competing on certain keywords in the search engine has shown to be very difficult, but not impossible. Referrals from search engines make the majority of my visitors. Other are coming from Webhostingtalk and other hosting related websites. The visitor group therefore seems to be very targeted.

Maintenance of the site has slowed down due to other projects of mine requiring more time. Overall – the Webhostingresourcekit.com is build with the thought not needing a lot of maintenance and hand holding and that concept seems to work for now. However – more time will be dedicated towards this website with the beginning of the year to bring fresh content and eventually other ideas to make the site even more valuable.

Anyway – I’d like to thank every visitor who finds his/her way to this website and hope that the information available is of value for you.

Best regards,

Christoph Puetz

Owner Webhostingresourcekit.com

Christoph Puetz · October 27, 2005

The Future for the smaller web hosts

What will the future of web hosting look like? At the moment it looks like the growth for Internet business is still very consistent and the overall future looks bright. More business will go online if terrorists continue to pose a thread when being in public places. Climate changes and events might also be a mitigating factor when it comes to online growth. The future for web hosting businesses should be a bright one, right?! But how bright is the future looking for the average web host out there?

About a year ago consolidation on the market was a hot topic and I think it still is. Especially the smaller web hosting businesses will see pressure in regards to keeping prices high enough to make a fair living and to be able to invest for future growth at the same time. Pressure will also come if another large market player enters the market or would expand its efforts to get more business. As an example – search engine providers are already looking for more ways to diversify business. Yahoo made the step into web hosting already – others like Google.com might follow. Every once in a while rumors already have it that Google’s debut as a web hosting provider is not that far out. So far this has not proven to be true, but who knows. If Google follows "1&1" business model and arrives with a fully automated hosting platform the smaller market players would likely feel the heat. Google is a trusted brand name with great products. A web hosting offer from Google for a low price might just what many folks would be waiting for. eBay could also be a potential candidate for this kind of service. A large established user base with a large connection to web hosting in a certain – who knows.

Automation and self-service options could also be a problem for the smallest of the smaller web hosts. If larger investments into new technology are needed the cash-strapped smaller web hosts will eventually hit a show stopping event and have to decide to either risk not following the market or to eventually sell their business to somebody with enough cash.

Overall smaller web hosting business should carve out a niche market and serve that market with full force to make sure that they do not open a back door to failure. If serving a niche market is not an option for a web host he should consider aggressive growth to be needed to stay competitive in the long run. Market consolidation might happen upon us faster than expected. "Expect to be eaten ….!"

Christoph Puetz · October 26, 2005

Server Build Standards

Once a hosting business reaches a certain size things might require to take different turns. Procedures that were easy to maintain and to decide on, suddenly require more administrative overhead to keep the business running. More personnel requires a little more management, more servers require a different take on server building and administration.

For a web hosting business the servers are pretty much the foundation of the business from a technical standpoint. If the servers go down the impact for the business can be severe. As soon as possible a web hosting business should establish certain standards that apply to all servers to reduce the administrative overhead for the administrators and to make it easier to troubleshoot problems.

Server Build Standards should contain requirements for hardware and software. Hardware is upgraded over time and newer machines come with faster CPU’s and eventually more disk space and memory. But by using a certain server model of a certain brand a minimum level of consistency is maintained and things like power supplies, memory, or drives are interchangeable. Technicians or admins will be familiar with the hardware and do not have to acquire and maintain knowledge about several different models with different the associated different issues.

Server software should be installed following the same steps and procedures on each server. Disk partitions, page file/swap file settings, user accounts, software settings and installed software in general – if this matches through-out the entire environment it will be very beneficial in the long run. Training of new employees does not require them to learn 25 different versions of a certain software. Troubleshooting will be made easier as the number of components on a system is limited and standardized through-out the environment. Server patching and updates/upgrades will be more smooth as testing will cover the entire environment. Different server builds would require additional testing to make sure nothing breaks. A standard level for security makes sure that all systems are secured. Standardized security also makes it easier to respond to security threads.

Servers could be build from a jumpstart server with all the right settings applied right when it comes online. One single server image needs to be maintained and new servers can be online within one hour if needed.

Overall – a standardized environment reduces the cost to maintain the environment. Web hosting businesses can save significant amounts of money and time and become more efficient.

Christoph Puetz · August 31, 2005

When SEO takes the value out of a website

Every webmaster would like to see his/her website to be the number 1 search result returned in search engines. A number 1 spot in Google pretty much guarantees loads of traffic to a website which can then materialize in high revenue for the website owner.

To reach that number 1 spot search engine optimization (SEO) is the tool webmasters have to use in almost every case. Several books have been written covering search engine optimization. Hundreds of websites cover the topic and give loads of advice. There is so much information about this topic – it’s almost impossible to digest. Webmasters have all they need available at their hands at any time and also share the knowledge.

Google (as an example) changes the rules all the time and missing out on these things can mean that a website drops down to the bottom of the search results delivered on any given search. The hunt for the best search engine optimization results is on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

As with anything there will always be people who go a step too far.

Search Engine Optimization is no exception. You’ve got the Black Hats who do use every legal or illegal trick to increase their website’s search engine ranking and you have the so called White Hats who play by the rules and only use legitimate SEO tools and tricks. And then you have people who just over-do it. They build their websites completely optimized for the search engines but seem to forget about the user in the end. These websites are stuffed with keywords and phrases all over.

Navigation and presentation of content is optimized for the search engine but they seem to completely forget about the human factor. Yes, driving traffic to the website from search engines is great. But what if the site is difficult to navigate for the visitor because it is optimized for a search engine and not for usability? A website not meeting the needs of humans is set up to fail.

Having the number 1 spot in a search engine will not materialize in higher profits and revenue if the site does not meet basics requirements for humans to a) navigate the site properly and b) to be able discover what they are looking for in an easy way. Articles stuffed with the same keywords over and over again are hard to read and the information the user is looking for is difficult to extract. Links to sub-pages covered under keywords over and over again will make it difficult to even get to the information the user is looking for. The user experience will be disappointing and will lead to the user moving on to other sites that are able to deliver information in an appropriate way. There are other webmasters who are able to achieve high search engine rankings and still offer satisfying experiences for users on their websites?

So, if you are a webmaster – will you optimize your websites for search engines or for the user?

Christoph Puetz · August 14, 2005

Uptime Guarantee – Good Idea?

When looking for a Web Host there are lots of factors that come into play. Usually the deciding factors are price and bandwidth. A common overlooked item is the uptime guarantee. This is the percentage of time your account will be up and running

What do these numbers really mean?

If we look at these percentages and convert them into the amount of time your site is going to be down we get some very telling information. The chart below lists the uptime gurantee percentage and how that equates to time.

99% – 5256 Min/Yr or 87.6 Hours/Yr – 438 Min/Month or 7.3 Hours/Month

99.5% – 2628 Min/Yr or 43.8 Hours/Yr – 219 Min/Month or 3.65 Hours/Month

99.9% – 525.6 Min/Yr or 8.76 Hours/Yr – 43.8 Min/Month or .73 Hours/Month

99.95% – 262.8 Min/Yr or 4.38 Hours/Yr – 21.9 Min/Month or .365 Hours/Month

99.99% – 52.56 Min/Yr or .876 Hours/Yr – 4.38 Min/Month or .073 Hours/Month

As you can see that while 99% uptime sounds like a lot, it actually allows for the host to have over 7 hours of downtime per month, or a whopping 87.6 hours per year. Your host could be down for over 3 ½ days over the course of a year and still hit their target of 99% uptime. As you go to 99.5% and 99.9%, it gets much better, and with 99.95% and 99.99% you would have little or no downtime.

Is this realistic?

Is it realistic to get 99.99% uptime? Probably not, but it is always nice if you can get compensated for downtime. However, if the host only compensates you for the actual downtime you have, it probably won’t be a large amount. Let’s assume you pay $20 a month for your hosting, which is probably on the upper end of what you’d be paying ofr a hosting account. We will also assume there a 30 days in the month. Breaking that down, you’re paying roughly 3 cents per hour for your hosting. This means if you site is down for 24 hours, 1 full day, you will only get 72 cents of compensation. By no means is this good if it means your site goes down and you get some pocket change.

So what does this mean to me?

So the more decimal places, the better the uptime guarantee. We also now know that we probably won’t be getting lots of money back if our site goes down. The ultimate goal is to find a web host that has an uptime guarantee and maintains that level of service. You don’t need the money back but you do need the peace of mind of having your website up and running.

Scott is the owner and chief designer for Smith-Concepts a successful web development firm.

Related Links: http://www.smith-concepts.com

Christoph Puetz · August 11, 2005

How to Get Better Technical Support

Whenever you have a technical question that needs answering, you want that answer as fast as possible, right? In the instantaneous world of the internet, patience has become a rare commodity, and the time you spend unable to send or receive email or waiting for your website to come back online can mean lost revenue. If you want to get a timely response from your support technician, there are things you can do as a customer to speed up the process:

Define the problem as accurately as possible

The more detail you can provide, the more quickly the technician can identify the source of the problem and correct it. Try to determine the following information if possible:
- What were you doing when the error occurred?
- What program were you operating that produced the error?
  Note the version of the program and the operating system that you are running on your computer.
- If there is a specific error message, what does it say? Be prepared to give this information to the technician by phone, email or fax.
- What are the steps you take to reproduce the error?
- What time did you first notice the error?
- Did the error occur only once, consistently over a period of time, or only when you do a certain thing?
- Can you reproduce the error on a separate computer?
Know the priority status of your request
Support technicians get many requests during the course of the day, often at the same time, with varying levels of urgency, and these requests take time to resolve. If a request cannot be resolved immediately, then it will be assigned an appropriate priority level based on the type of problem to be resolved as soon as possible.
- Outages – Always top priority. If your website or email is down, any good technician should drop all other projects until this is resolved.
- Breakages – If a critical part of your website becomes inoperable due to a server error, such as a database for a shopping cart, this should always be addressed with high priority.
- Time Sensitive Operations – If you need something to be done within a certain time frame, such as enabling or disabling a feature of your account, then you should make this clear to the technician. The operation should be performed within the prescribed time frame as long as a higher priority issue does not arise.
- Ongoing Problems – If a particular problem continues to occur for an extended period of time, its priority should be raised as necessary the longer the problem goes on.
- Non-Critical Operations – If your request does not adversely affect the function of your services or contain a time-sensitive element, it will receive the lowest priority, but it still should be handled as soon as reasonably possible.
Allow an appropriate response time
As stated previously, most technicians have more than one problem to handle at once, so once you have an idea of the priority level of your request, allow a reasonable amount of time for it to be resolved. Server errors should be resolved within hours to same day, depending on the circumstances. Lower priority items which can be quickly resolved should usually be handled by the next day. If a request will require several hours of work to resolve, expect it to take longer. A technician’s job is to be constantly interrupted all day, so such requests will usually be saved until time permits or passed off to another available person to be completed. Understand that any completion time estimate given to you is assuming the absence of any higher priority requests intervening in the process.

Most types of technical support requests should be answered with an acknowledgement of completion. If you do not receive one or are unable to determine on your own that your issue has been resolved within a reasonable amount of time, then you should contact the technician again to inquire about the status of your request.
Be a pest if you have to, but be courteous
If your request is taking an unreasonable amount of time to be resolved, then there is some truth to the old adage that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." If the technician can give you a reasonable explanation for the extended time frame, such as resolving a higher priority issue, then try to give them an appropriate extension to resolve your request. If the explanation for the delay is unsatisfactory and the problem continues to go unresolved, you may need to ask for the assistance of another technician. You should be assertive because you are paying for your services, but do not be abusive. Technicians are human beings too, and not all of them are going to respond well to your unpleasant remarks. If the situation becomes bad enough that you truly believe your anger is warranted, ask to speak with somebody else, describe the unsatisfactory response you received, and request that your issue be handled with the highest priority possible. If this doesn’t work, then it’s time to consider switching service providers.
Know the technician’s responsibilities
A support technician at a hosting company is not necessarily responsible for every possible problem you can have on the internet. He is only responsible for resolving problems with the services that his company provides to you. If the company only provides web hosting and domain registration services, then they cannot be held responsible for problems caused by website design flaws, internet connection service outages, email addresses obtained through other providers, or office network problems. Most good technicians are willing to give you a limited amount of assistance with these types of problems anyway, but it should not be expected of them and you should know who else to call if the technician determines that the problem is not within his realm of control.
Don’t be a hypochondriac
You should learn to help yourself whenever possible, because it’s almost always faster than asking somebody else for help. If you are constantly asking for the same password or asking the technician to perform the same task over and over again when you can learn to do it yourself, you are wasting the technician’s time and preventing other people from being helped quickly and efficiently. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. If you are always making the same mistakes and asking somebody else to fix them, you will quickly find yourself at the bottom of anybody’s priority list. If the technician explains to you how to do something, make sure that the procedure is recorded and stored where you can find it again. It’s worth your extra time and his to do this if it saves you both time later on a repetitive task.

Although every case is unique, we believe that by following these guidelines you will consistently receive faster and friendlier assistance on most of your technical support requests.

About the Author

Stacy Clifford is the founder of ChiliPepperWeb.net and has spent four years assisting customers in understanding how their web services work.

Christoph Puetz · August 5, 2005

Does Your Host Fight Spam?

Virtually anyone with an email address knows what Spam is, and has, perhaps, considered giving up the speed, convenience, and simplicity of email because of it. Those who have their own websites are more vulnerable than the average person with a single work or home email address from their company or Internet Service Provider. Email addresses visible on a website can quickly become Spam magnets, as automated programs, similar in form to search engine spiders, roam the web, looking for addresses to which new broadsides of Spam may be fired. Website hosting companies generally provide their clients email accounts for use with their domain, but are you with a host that provides those email accounts with Spam and virus protection?

Local Blacklist Filters
Webmasters shouldn’t need to seek out local filters for their site’s contact email addresses. There are a variety of server level solutions a hosting company can offer to protect their users from unwanted emails. A most basic step is provision of a very rudimentary "blacklist" functionality to their users, allowing them to prevent future Spam emails from arriving from the same address. This type of filter is virtually worthless in today’s Spam environment, though, as it is quite rare to see unsophisticated email arriving from the same address multiple times. Spammers have grown far more sophisticated than that. Blacklisting functionality is only really useful in avoiding email from other real people you don’t particularly wish to hear from anymore.

Keywords and Regular Expressions
More advanced server level Spam filters are available. A small advance is accomplished using keyword filters. Keyword filters merely check for instances of a certain string of characters and deny the message if that string if found. The core problem with keyword-only filters is they can "over filter". Someone who puts "sex" on their keyword filter will find receiving local news and event announcements difficult if they live in a town named "Essex". Some filters attempt to address this deficiency by using "regular expressions" in order to build a sophisticated rule set to prevent Spam from reaching your inbox. Briefly, regular expressions are syntax rules used to identify certain strings of text or numbers. These rules can be set up to identify text patterns that are commonly used in Spam. They can become quite complex, but, as with most any filtering method, are not 100% bullet proof. Some filters that use regular expressions come with a basic set that can be appended by the user. Obviously this kind of feature is of little use to someone not familiar with regular expressions.

Bayesian Filters
Currently the most sophisticated filtering methods use Bayesian inferences. Bayesian filters take a large data set and determine the probability a message is Spam based on its similarity to previous Spam messages. The more emails that are processed and flagged theoretically make the filter more accurate. Services that provide filtering on an ISP or host level, like Postini’s "SpamAway", filter billions of emails and provide the highest level of success and fewest "false positives". SpamAway is already highly intelligent about identifying Spam and doesn’t require any "learning" commands or examples be provided. The online, browser based interface keeps flagged messages in an easily accessible "quarantine" and allows the user to check for any false positives. White list functionality is provided to aide in the prevention of future false positives. A hosting company offering such an advanced service takes Spam and virus filtering for their customers seriously.

About the Author

Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.

Christoph Puetz · August 3, 2005

The Perfect Support

Imagine yourself as a person running a small-medium sized online store that concentrates on affordablly prized gift items, and say, it’s Christmas time. Everybody is on a shopping spree, and you have been waiting for this vacation to arrive, as it is the time of the year when your business really blooms, and with which’s revenues you have got to plan for the year to come.

Say, your site goes down due to some sort of problems associated with your server on say, the 23rd of December, or on Christmas eve. You will be contacting your hosting company in frenzy, and just imagine if there’s nobody there to provide you with prompt support and resolution for your issue.By the time boxing day arrives, nobody will need to send gifts anymore to anyone. You have lost your business, and now your site and business has got a notorious reputation of not being active when it counts.

The above is just a worse case scenario explained to put forward a point. Quality support is the backbone of a hosting company. It is the pillar on which a hosting firm rests it’s credibility. Speedy and accurate customer service is rare and indicates a superior overall hosting service. When choosing a web host, what customers generally look for are Server performance, Space, Traffic allowed, Features, Cost, and most importantly Customer support.

If a hosting company is one which takes it’s business seriosly, their technical support must be perfect by all means. Determining whether technical support is dependable is important, because if anything goes wrong with your site, you are going to be contacting your know-it-all customer care rep. However, in the real world, we know that knowledgeable customer care is hard to find.

Most of the hosting companies claim that they have techs working round the clock in their organizations, managing their state-of-the art systems. While this in fact may be true, sometimes, the people working with the support might be the most unprofessional and underqualified ones. Due to the huge demand for information technology professionals today, many web hosts are not able to find employees who are well trained in OS concepts, network technology and control panel specifications. Other firms pump in a lot of money to advertising and marketing and gives good quality customer support only the lowest priority. In both instances, it is the customers who eventually suffers due to the lack of competence in handling their issues related to hosting.

The following is a small article gives a brief insight into the hosting support considerations for the newbies in business, as well as any host who have got high regards for the quality standards of their company. Before proceeding, please keep in mind the fact that Web Hosting Support is not child’s play. It is something that is NOT to be taken for granted.

Finding the Right Support for you

Finding the perfect support for your company is not a very easy task. Every webhost who have got serious thoughts about their hosting support would be having certain expectation levels regarding the quality of support. Only if your support matches / outperforms your expectations would you feel relaxed, relieved and be happy with them.

The very first concern regarding support is how to keep things going 24 / 7. Every webhost provides their customers with a 24 / 7 support promise, and some even give their customers a money back guarantee on any failure to keep up the promise. You should be implementing methods to ensure that your support team covers the 24 hours of the day effectively, and co-ordinate between them regarding the technical and administrative aspects of your servers.

Then comes the cost part. There are options for maintaining an inhouse team of technical experts, or outsourcing to an outsourced hosting support company. You should choose your support wisely with efficient computations of your expenditure and profit margin. You should do it in such a way that the quality of support is not compromised, and at the same time you have the decent profit to enhance your business in the long run. Please note that in the very beginning itself, you should set the standards, and should never go below them. Remember – It’s a jungle out there, with huge competition. If you have to survive, you have to be the best; and to be the best, you have got to give your customers the best. Manage high standards…. returns would come automatically.

Web hosting support not only means providing technical solutions to your end customers; but the sales / billing support and timely administration of your servers are equally important. You can manage the sales / billing issues yourself, or you can avail the aid of a graduate with good customer skills, and excellent knowledge on the packages / features / options that you provides. Regarding the server administration, you require the service of a good system administrator to perform the timely software upgrades, and the other fine tuning aspects of the server for it’s smooth functioning. It is always an additional advantage to maintain a team of technical experts who can perform your technical support as well as server administration; rather than having separate teams for the same. It would reduce the overall costs involved, and will enhance quality of customer support due to the better knowledge of the servers.

In-House or Outsourced??

Now comes the big question. Do you need an in-house team of technicians, or do you want to outsource your support to a support company? There has been disputes over this on most of the web hosting forums. Both the options has got advantages and disadvantages. But on tallying with the positive and negative sides of both of them, my vote goes to outsourced support. A comparison of the advantages is provided in the chart below:

ADVANTAGES

—————

In-House

1) Direct interaction with the support staff in person

2) Direct recruitment of the support staff yourself, so as to meet your ideal requirements on first-hand

3) Local market knowledge and expertise when it comes to sales and marketing

4) Ready availability-upon-call of your in house team in case of any emergency

Outsourced

1) Far cheaper than what is required to maintain an inhouse support team

2) You can concentrate on your business marketing, while the outsource company takes care of the technical side.

3) Expertise in specific fields related to every server software.

4) No hassles with the planning of shifts or personnel to manage the 24 / 7 support, as it is taken care of by the outsource company.

5) No issues associated with training the support staff.

Outsource companies are able to provide you with high quality, but cheap support due to the low cost of living standards in those countries. Most of the hosting companies are located in the United States, Canada and Europe, and the major outsource companies are located in countries like India. Due to the comparatively lower cost of living in countries like India, the above is made possible. With inhouse support, you have to pay the wages that is par with the living standards in the United States and such; which makes it an expensive option.

There are several myths related to outsourcing jobs. According to the trade and foreign aid research conducted by The Heritage Foundation , the American economy has only benefitted from outsourcing jobs to the asian countries, and has not gone down, as the general concept is.

But with outsourced support, you have got to make the right choice. Due to the huge demand for professionals in the ITES ( Information Technology Enables Services ), many webhosts can’t find employees with expertise in the relevant fields. You should be doing a research on the work culture and standards of the different outsourced companies before making the right source. A search for the leading outsourced companies in forums like http://webhostingtalk.com can provide you with pro and con views that you’ll require to make the decision.

Still, most of the outsourced companies provide you with a testing period of upto a month to test them out. You can utilize this time period to analyze the quality of your support company, if you are not sure about it.

The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:

DISADVANTAGES

——————

In-House

1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe

2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support

3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.

Outsourced

1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. ( overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company )

2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company’s internal policies.

3) Have got to make sure of the written ( spoken too, if required ) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.

The language barrier could be an issue with only a few cheap quality outsourced support companies. It would be a good measure to talk to their representatives / contact points over chat / telephone to get an idea of how it’s going to be overall. With the leading support companies, the language problems should not happen, as they would have required formal training both technically, as well as with customer orientation. Still, it is very important from your part to make sure of their support quality.

To summarize, it is always better to choose a good outsourced support firm, that maintains it’s promises and does not comprise on quality, rather than yourself employing separate staff to handle your technical support, sales / billing and server administration. ( Unless you have got the money to roll, and is keen on having all your employees available in person upon your call )

The Quality Factor

Speaking of quality, what do one exactly mean by or point to when talking about the Quality of Support ( QoS ) ? Quality is not an accident, but the collective output of well planned stages of service, with the very best systems to back them up. When we refer to the complete QoS, there are a lot of points that comes into consideration – Being knowledgeable, Polite, Communicative, Honest, Fast, Empathetic, Competent, Responsible and above all, overall Perfection. Let’s check out how these becomes important.

Being knowledgeable is the most important part. Always keep in mind that our customers needs competent people at the receiving end of their mails and calls. By being knowledgeable, we mean that the support person should be possessing the proper knowledge level related to the support and service that we are offering. In this case, say, if you are a host who offers Cpanel hosting on Red hat Enterprise Linux servers, the technical support staff that works for you should be having extensive knowledge in the following areas:

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools ( administrative / user control panel interfaces ) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Responsibility of your support team is another important aspect. There is a lot of difference between a person who has undergone years of dedicated computer study in school and college doing this job, and a teenager with some computer background doing it part-time. The support team should be responsible in addressing various heterogeneous issues, and should also be good with the decision making related to the smooth functioning of the servers.

Say, one of your servers is having an issue with the apache server software running in the server being not compatible with PHP, as a result of a latest control panel upgrade. Your support team must not only be able to fix the immediate requests from customers hosted in this server, but should also be taking the necessary steps to identify the root cause of the issue, implement it in the server under question, and also check the rest of the servers ( if any ) for similar compatibility issues, and get them fixed, so that no unnecessary botherations are avoided for both the party – the customer and the support rep.

To sum up things, the support techs should not be just people to see off the day to day issues of the end customer, but they should be responsible so as to ensure that the server is fine tuned to see off any vulnerability associated with it, so that no issues arise from within the server as a result of an exploitation of that.

Then comes the communication part. This is as important as being knowledgeable. A support technician needs to address an issue raised by you or an end customer in grammatically correct language, and also including all the important points related to the issue, that the customer should be made aware of. A polite, consice and communicative reply addressing the various aspects of a support ticket always gives the end customer a feeling of care. A good support tech is one who empathises the client, i.e, think by standing in the client’s shoes. When a support person can feel the client’s problems, and read in between the lines, it puts the end client at ease, no matter what the issue is. Just take the case of the following scenario. A customer has published the following support ticket:

==============================================================

Hi,

I am not able to send mails out of my account user@foo.com. The mails are not going out of Outlook Express, and I am getting the following error:

Mail refused error "sorry that domain isn’t in my list of allowed rcpthosts error 553"

Please get it fixed ASAP. I am unable to contact my customers !!!

Paul Smith

==============================================================

And consider the following replies, which implies the same message, and tell me which one feels better:

Response # 1 :

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This is since you are not doing POP before SMTP. Check your incoming mails, before trying to send them using OE.

Support team

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Response # 2 :

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Hi Paul,

This error is caused when email client software configured with multiple email accounts from different domains is used to send email to an account that it has not checked for messages first. To get over this, always make sure to check the incoming mails using your Outlook Express, before trying to send mails out of it. This is called POP before SMTP.

An easy remedy is to check your email from user@foo.com before sending or set your email client to check email every 15 minutes or close and reopen your Outlook Express. It shall work for you, and you shall be able to mail your customers in no time.

Best Regards,

Tech name

Support team

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Upon examining the above two replies, what do you feel? No matter how frustrated the end customer who sent in the ticket might be, response # 2 will provide him with the “care factor” that response # 1 could not do. In response # 2, the support tech has done the following:

Analyzed that the customer is not very techny-savvy

Understood that he is trying to send in some important mail(s), and is frustrated with things not going working correctly for him

Replied the customer very politely and with atmost care keeping both the above two considerations in mind.

Support techs should always be polite to the customers. Some of the customers may even use harsh terms while mailing the support team, due to their frustration. A support tech should just ignore those comments, keeping in mind the fact that it is nothing personal and the customer is just angry with some utility not working for him properly. There are certain rare cases, when the support team receives really hard-to-interact-with customers. Some people might just do not understand what the support person is trying to say, or not listen what he is asking the customer to do. In these rare cases of non co operation, it is always better for the hosting owner ( you ) to respond to the customer asking him politely to co operate with the support team, or any solution to his problem might get unnecessarily delayed.

The overall perfection of a support team is the right combination of the following qualities:

1) Technical Superiority

2) Command over written and communicative skills

3) Politeness , Friendliness and Empathy

4) Responsibility

5) Endurance

The webhosts, on the other hand should also understand that the support team is an integral part of his business, and treat them with respect and consideration. The webhosting owner should be a good manager here, who knows how to make his support team work with their maximum potential for him. At the same time, he should not pressurize them by unnecessarily interfering in their job. Always keep them at ease, and make them feel free to approach you with any of their requirements / suggestions.

Conclusion

To conclude, when you appoint the support team, to assist with your business, make sure of the following things:

You get what you are promised of ( 24 / 7 support , and the exact time limits required to reply to, and resolve a problem )

Your support team co ordinates perfectly with you, and has got a good knowledge on the plans, services, and offers that you provide your clients with, so that they can be serviced better, and on time.

Your support team is friendly and courteous, and is always willing to go that ‘extra step’ when it comes to customer satisfaction.

Your support team is extremely knowledgeable and should be able to do anything that their job demands out of them.

You should be in excellent rapport with your support team, and should let them be at ease with you; and at the same time you should know where to draw the fine line as well.

In the webhosting business, where stiff competition awaits you, it is always the customer evangelism ( customers preaching the good points of your webhosting service ) that brings in clients. There is no publicity as mouth publicity. Your support team would be responsible for more than 80% of it. If they are good, your business shall flourish, and if it’s the other way around, you are going to have a tough time in the future.

So choose wisely. There is a bright future awaiting you.

About the Author

Compiled by Yusuff Rejo, Team Leader, Bobcares

The author, Yusuff Rejo has been working as a Team leader for the last 3 years at BobCares.com, a premier web hosting support provider for various hosting companies, datacenters and ISP’s all over the world.

His main areas of interests are Personnel management, Transactional analysis, and Web hosting articles. He spends his leisure time enjoying Classic 60’s-70’s Rock, latest hollywood movies, and playing table tennis.

You can contact him at yusuf@poornam.com

http://www.BobCares.com

http://www.Poornam.com

http://www.YusuffAndFebin.com