What should be considered as normal support time in your opinion?

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Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 05:51 AM
So I wonder, What in your opinion should be the support time for VPS/Dedicated server users? I am speaking about a client that pays around 120$ and more per month for sake of argument. I do not mean specifically emergency issues by the way, just general support ticket when help is needed with something. This is something that troubles me for some time now, because when my own clients contact me they expect a response within minutes and I actually provide it for them, but when I contact my own provider they answer sometimes within 8-12 hours, which means my entire workday is already over by the time I get response and some things have to be delayed for tomorrow, which increases my own workload.
Posted by HostColor, 04-24-2017, 06:11 AM
Well, it depends of your business model. If a client has chosen any particular provider, this meant that one is supposed to understand the way the company does business. So one would agree to the provider's model... or more less. On the other hand it is there is a huge competition out there, so a web host cannot afford to put you on hold for ours. 8 hours or more is ridiculous. I consider such waiting time as incident, especially if there is a support ticket or an email concerning any technical issue.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 06:43 AM
Well, they claim to have 24x7 support, and whent I started with them their support time was relatively fast, which made me believe I did the right choice ofcourse. But after several months paying probably over thousands of $ already, the time it takes to answer my not complicated tickets is hours and hours of waiting time, which starts to make me believe I should consider leaving. I am about to make some huge changes and invest 3 times the money I am spending atm and I will not do it with a company I can't fully trust to serve the best of my interest.
Posted by HostColor, 04-24-2017, 06:50 AM
If they do claim 24x7, but at the same time it takes them a lot of time to respond to clients, then it does not matter what do they say about their support, does it You see, this is the difference between the quality and average service providers. Those who are committed to a quality service, just do not compromise with it. It looks to me that you have already decided that it is risky to stay with this provider. Now you need to decide does it worth to switch to a new one. I would suggest you to create a list of requirements and to discuss it with few providers. Then you'll be able to decide based on what they could do for you.
Posted by LJSHost, 04-24-2017, 07:42 AM
Time is always an issue when you are depending on your provider for support but if I was paying that amount I would expect not just a response but also a resolution within a couple of hours max. Try to learn to help yourself, running a VPS/Dedicated is really quite simple even more so if you have cPanel. Start learning Linux and go from there.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 07:51 AM
Well I am not the type of person to sit on my ass and wait for support to respond to me, whenever I do open a ticket it is while I am already trying to solve the issue myself, or when I already tried but the problem is just outside the scope of my comperhension and I need professiona help. And sometimes it is because I am actually unavailable during my studies or massive work loads and need them to help. Fortunately I am already in the process of taking a major linux course so as time goes on it will be less of an issue to me.
Posted by Maple-Hosting, 04-24-2017, 09:51 AM
Assuming that you're not after the most affordable solution available, you should be able to find a hosting provider which will reply much quicker than 8 - 12 hours. That's unreasonable. As you said, your own clients expect replies within minutes, there's no reason for you to have to wait for hours.
Posted by SenseiSteve, 04-24-2017, 10:45 AM
I would expect a response in under 15 minutes. Resolution times would depend on the specific issue. Basic issues should be handled in under half an hour.
Posted by RackService, 04-24-2017, 11:15 AM
As said, depending on the issue. But normally it should be not more than a few hours. However, this varies per provider. Some providers will make you wait 24-48 hours for the first reply.
Posted by rpoarch, 04-24-2017, 02:03 PM
It depends on the issue, and the complexity of it problem. With that being said though, they should at the very least respond to your ticket within an hour letting you know they are working on fixing the issue. After this, it should not take them more than 1-2 hours to have the issue fully resolved. Anything longer than this, is ridiculous in my opinion. If your not satisfied with the support (which you can't be if your posting here ) I would suggest finding another web host.
Posted by Madbunny, 04-24-2017, 02:55 PM
Bad, bad, bad... bad, bad hosting company - 20+ min, Good hosting company - 10-20 min, Excellent hosting company - <10 min, OMG what is this hosting company - They will answer before you ask the question. Saw all versions aside of the last one, but people like to say "hope dies last".
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 02:56 PM
Well, proactive support and such
Posted by MechanicWeb-shoss, 04-24-2017, 03:18 PM
I am curious how many issues you were referring to? With a decent company, you shouldn't have many issues, especially if they are server related. What were those issues about? Is it possible that they were suffering from growth issues since they used to offer a decent support earlier?
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 03:29 PM
Without going on too much details on public forums, I'm not talking server related issues mostly, server is up and running just fine. My tickets are on small matters normally, roughly 5 tickets per month, normally those are just simple questions/concerns that do not require any active support but simply giving me an answer.
Posted by MechanicWeb-shoss, 04-24-2017, 03:38 PM
Some providers do delay in answering questions that can be found on their published website / KB but when you open a ticket regarding an actual issue, they response fast. Depending on your situation, if this is the case, you could just ask them for a clarification and explain that if this is the case, it is hurting you, before making the final decision.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-24-2017, 03:55 PM
I do not tend to make such inquiries over matters I can find my own solutions, since it is wasting my time normally and I rather have it done by the time any kind of support would help me, so when I do open a ticket it is either for practical reason or because of legit concern about something. I normally open a ticket as last resort.
Posted by HyperVMart, 04-25-2017, 07:37 AM
I think you don't need to over-stress things, most new providers try to address client concerns within minutes or even IMMEDIATELY although that sound a great business practice you might not be able t keep up with it especially if you are working alone and/or can't assign 2-3 team members to fulfill 24 Hour Shifts, not mentioning weekends for those staff, so people will start asking where is your 24x7 support you promised ?? Best thing IMO to hire one staff and the best working hours is IMO from 8:00 AM till 23:59, am sure you can handle it ! As for emergency matters you can provide your number for clients you think they might face urgent issues (or) have on call staff only for issue between midnight and 8:00 AM in the morning... As i said dont over stress things and depending on where you live and your clients locations i tend to believe most client themselves will contact you only during those hours i mentioned, or hire a third party outsourced staff if you REALLY need to handle tickets 24x7 ASAP !... Wish you Luck...
Posted by HostBastic, 04-25-2017, 07:44 AM
Why would you have issues in the first place? Decent providers should offer a trouble free service to begin with. Unless their support team is overflowed with support tickets there is no explenation for such long response times.
Posted by zFastLee, 04-25-2017, 12:40 PM
Generally I would expect a helpful response within 30 mins and a resolution (depending on the complexity of the issue) within an hour or so during the providers business hours. Obviously if there's something more serious or it needs to be referred to a SNR technician then it may take longer depending on the companies setup. In most instances though I'd expect this to be resolved in a timely manner. If they offer 24x7 support, then it should generally be that around the clock, however the amount of providers who do offer this normally outsource support, so the quality of support may differ.
Posted by MechanicWeb-shoss, 04-25-2017, 01:18 PM
You are a kind of customer providers would love to work with. In that case, there might be something going with the provider. Take caution and have your backups updated periodically.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-26-2017, 11:58 AM
Well I'm working as web dev and provide hosting so it is in my best interest to actually learn how to solve every single issue my clients have in order to give them the best response, delegating work to support team is against my interest thus I only do it when it is a must.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-26-2017, 12:00 PM
I get your point, but I am a small time freelancer who generally gets job "mouth to ear" style, and so giving the best possible service to my clients is my first priority, and so they know not only I know personally their business in terms of website, I will also take care for any issues they might have quickly as possible.
Posted by EvolveWebHosting, 04-28-2017, 02:48 PM
I completely agree with this and it's not un reasonable at all.
Posted by sunnytoday, 04-28-2017, 11:08 PM
Is this managed or unmanaged dedicated? Are those 5 tickets related to regular maintenance of a managed server? Because 60 tickets a year seems like an awful lot of times to be contacting support if it is for actual technical issues/trouble. Can you give an example of what kind of questions you are asking? Perhaps they are getting annoyed with 60 tickets a year on trivial questions?
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-29-2017, 06:11 AM
- It is fully managed vps. - Those 5 tickets are average and are mixed, I fail to see how is this relevant, I am not trying to crucify my own provider merely get what is general behavior in the industry. - Part of giving service to a client is to answer or redirect him to an answer atleast, imo. What is trivial to one might not be to another, but considering I am a person who constantly learns about the hosting industry for the past 2 or more years, I could argue that my questions are not "trivial". If *any* of my providers are mad about me asking questions which are important for me to manage my business through them, they should honestly just "fire" me, aka let me know that I am too much of a burden. I don't contact support in order to ask what is the color of the sky, I contact them to ask if I can actiavte autoSSL feature for all of the cpanels on the server without causing an issue with cpanels that have existing SSLs, so I won't do a dumb thing that would actually require me to get their support for real. So if I am taking my time to learn around the WHM for example, and I just want to make sure the thing I'm doing is ok, that should make the support satisfied, instead of me causing issues irresponsibly and ask them to fix it, knowing what damage I might have caused.
Posted by sunnytoday, 04-29-2017, 01:02 PM
Perhaps they should, but I'm sure that decision is not for the help desk agent answering the tickets to make. Having worked in retail many moons ago as a youngster, there were plenty of customers I would have loved to 'fire', but of course our managers would never hear of it, because they weren't the ones that had to deal with it. With that being said, assuming each ticket takes an average of 15 minutes of support time (opening it, reading through it, figuring out the answer, fixing whatever, typing a response, etc.)...that's 15 HOURS a year of support time, just to handle you...that's a lot. I don't know exactly what each and every ticket you open is about, but I will say that personally, I average 0 tickets per month with my web host.
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 04-29-2017, 01:22 PM
1 hour response time (average 5-10 minutes) and 3 hours resolution time (average 30-60mins) is what I would expect.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-29-2017, 01:24 PM
Well what I was taught as a decent human being is that if I advertise in my business I give certain service I should stick up to it. The impression you make here is as if working for the money you get is a bad thing, but well, it isn't. The fact you are able to produce 0 tickets per year is nice for you, but there is a reason there is *managed* service for servers. Now about your math, I provide service on application level to my clients, and I must say your 15 minutes per ticket assumption is way off. If I ask about rather or not its safe to actiavte autoSSL for all of my users on WHM, that should take a sys admin around less than minute to actually close the ticket, or he does not know his job. Let us say for matter of argument that he needs to look in the system to make sure, that is less than 5 minutes per the entire ticket. And so spending up to 30 minutes per month on support to a client that pays 45$ per that support, is a really nice profit margin all things considered, but a bright sys admin that is not a total noob could close all of my tickets in a lot less than 30 minutes in all honesty and keep the profit margin high enough to make a client such as myself profitable to the business.
Posted by sunnytoday, 04-29-2017, 01:39 PM
First, there is a thing about 'reasonable'. If you go to an 'all you can eat buffet', is it reasonable to stay there for 8 hours, consuming 15 courses? No. If a car dealership offers a test drive, is it reasonable to drive 3,000 miles and return the car next month? No. Likewise, I'm sure the web host has something in their policy/contract about 'reasonable' use. Second, from my understanding of your post, they are replying...just not as quickly as you want them to? Are they guaranteeing you a response time in less then X minutes in their ads? Third, I think you are misunderstanding what 'managed' means...it means that the provider will keep the server up-to-date, patched, running properly, up-to-date software, etc. instead of you having to do it. Not that they handle an endless cycle of questions. Finally, you only provide that one example of a question, so I don't know what the rest of your questions are that you open tickets for. But if nearly all of your questions are so simple that they can be handled in a minute or two, perhaps you should look for a new line of work that you understand better? I don't see how a competent web developer/host/whatever you are can have so many simple questions.
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-29-2017, 01:50 PM
This is the part of the conversation where you are extremely rude and should consider how you communicate with people you don't know, so I seriously advice you to consider your words better in order to maintain a productive conversation as you feel the need to respond. 1. When a company states "unlimited tickets", I honestly believe opening 5 tickets per month is EXTREMELY reasonable. If you don't that is your opinion and I respect it, but it does not change anything. 2. Once again, you speak about 1 of my own providers, I gave them as example only. If I wanted to move away I would do it. Also there is a slight difference between 15 minutes to 1 hour to 8 hours, in my book, and I am sure every reasonable person here will agree with me. 3. I did not misunderstand anything, as I read perfectly what the managed service of my provider is all about BEFORE I have enlisted with them, and also made sure about that via asking their support before we signed anything, so this attemp to belittle my intelligence is really not appropriate. Finally, this is where you really cross the line. I have never asked of you to evaluate my skills and my career path, as I recall. And so you daring to suggest what I should do with my life is extremely rude. The last time I have cheked nobody started out knowing everything about their career, and I am honestly happy with everything I have achieved since I became freelancer, so thank you for your 2 seconds analysis but I think I will keep doing whatever it is I am doing.
Posted by sunnytoday, 04-29-2017, 02:07 PM
First, I'm not the customer service rep at your web host where I have to be all nice and cheerful, I can speak freely and call it how I see it. Second, it appears you feel the need to respond to me as well...no one's forcing you to reply if you don't think this is a productive discussion. Third, do they really state in their ad 'unlimited tickets'? I don't think I've ever seen a company state that...and if they did I would be a bit concerned about their company and why they feel I would need to submit so many tickets. Fourth, you actually submitted a ticket to ask them about submitting tickets!? That's a big LOL right there. I sure hope you sent that ticket as 'extra low priority'. Fifth, it's one thing to learn, to research, to lookup and to read more about a topic of interest on your own...it's quite another to send a ticket in asking if it's okay to send in multiple tickets. lol
Posted by YardenSadeHive, 04-29-2017, 02:15 PM
Speak freely all you want, it is your right, but you should also show some minimal level of respect, and stay on topic. Telling me to find a new line of work or suggesting im incompetent is really non of your business. And yes, I have sent them an inquiry about the nature of the support they provide under fully managed service, I actually think it is really viable inquiry, if you find that so funny that is up to you ofcourse. If you really want to burst in laugh, I will also let you know I ask a provider about their hardware/software and support before I sign with them a 300$ per month contract, silly me! I mean, who would want to know what they are actually paying for so much money before signing up?!
Posted by aaronbeck, 04-30-2017, 12:06 PM
Their first reply should come in less that 15 - 20 minutes ( not the bot reply, the actual technical staff reply ). The rest of replies should be depend upon the issue. Also, updates regarding the progress should be given at regular intervals.