Are Our Support Options Good Enough?

At the moment we’re hiring staff for a variety of roles. One of the things we are planning on doing is extending our general operating hours for customer service and sales.
For the past few months we’ve gradually extended our work shifts so that our technical support and sales teams are fully operational and answering the phones between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday (GMT).
Outside office hours all clients who have dedicated servers or use us for colocation have access to our oncall staff (If you fall into this category and have misplaced the contact details let us know!).
In terms of maintenance notifications we will be offering more options in the coming weeks, so watch this space.
In the meantime we recommend that people keep an eye on this site for updates. You can subscribe to the RSS feed or to email notifications.
But what about telephone support at the weekend?
Do people actually want that?
If we made it available would people use it?
What about “live chat”?
Are our ticket response times outside office hours fast enough?
Are they too slow?
Based on the responses we got from our recent survey I gather that people are happy with our customer service overall, but that we could improve it.
So what would you like to see?

About the Author: Michele Neylon

Known for his outspoken opinions on technology and the Internet, Michele Neylon is the award winning author of several blogs and co-host of the Technology.ie podcast. A thought leader in the Internet community, Neylon is active within ICANN and an expert on policy, security, domains, ICANN, Nominet and Internet Governance. You can stalk him on various social media networks including Twitter and Instagram

7 Comments

Ciaran February 16, 2008 at 16:35

I think live chat is a good idea not just for support but sales too. In my experience people often have questions that they would not be comfortable lodging a formal ticket for but would have no problem with an informal chat. Especialy if it is relativly anonymous. Which should ultimatly lead to better support and more sales.
Michele Neylon February 16, 2008 at 19:59

Ciaran
That makes sense 🙂
I know I’ve used LiveChat on several sites in the past.
Thanks for your feedback
Michele
Darren February 18, 2008 at 03:03

LiveChat is a great idea, and personal i would feel better talking to a live chat person than ringing up someone, as I might feel my question is stupid or something and wont want to say it on the phone.
I think your support staff are great and have been great help when i have had issues.
telephone suppport at the weekend isnt a big thing for me. i dont see any need for it
Michele Neylon February 18, 2008 at 08:53

Darren
Thanks for the feedback
Michele
Proinnsias February 18, 2008 at 12:35

Having had ‘issues’ transferring a domain from a provider I’ll not name (because I don’t want to advertise ’em) I can’t thank Paul and Michele enough for getting things moved – despite eating into the massive profit domain registration brings !!

IMO, Live chat is the way to go on this, the fact that some staffers are known regulars on IRC is a great resource – even better when they’re willing to go above and beyond !
Michele Neylon February 18, 2008 at 19:37

So would that be another vote in favour of live chat?
MCS February 21, 2008 at 21:51

Hi,
I’m using the blog mentioned above as a test on blacknight.
I have a couple of small websites with different hosts but I’m happy enough with blacknight so far. I don’t know if you offer it but I’d like to see an option where I could pay, say, €50 and your staff would copy my sites from ‘HostA’ to your site.
P.S. You won’t remember me since I was using a different username but you gave me some advice over on askaboutmoney.com about 4 months ago. And I did buy hosting off you!
Regards,
MCS