Quality support increases customer retention which is as important as new customer acquisition.There is no hard and fast rule on how to provide support. However for a startup webhosting company, its better to be aware of the options available. This article would show how effectively support can be provided with the limited resources available. Many of the ideas and points in this article would help all those who are presently stuck up running their businesses from their homes to foray into this business in a organized way and make it big. While deciding on how to provide the support, the same rules don't apply everywhere. Larger hosting companies should be handled differently from smaller hosts. If you are a newbie ask yourself the following questions. 1) How many hours can you spend daily for providing support ? 2) What is the level of technical skill you have ? 3) What is your support budget? 4) Are your clients more technically proficient than you are? 5) What are the technical services you would like to provide ? The answers to the above question will help in deciding what support system is to be used . Lets see how the answers to each question would influence the plan. 1) How many hours can you spend daily, for providing support? A proper customer system can give you more time to spend on other departments like marketing and sales. So when you are designing the customer support system, you should decide on how much time you should be spending on providing support. What happens if there is not much time available for support? For a startup company, spending just 3-4 hrs ( not necessarily in one go ), would be more than enough. Since there would be only few support queries coming in, it wouldn't be difficult to handle all queries . But here instead of concentrating on replying to each email or phone call, start building a solid self help options for customers . Build a knowledge base and also provide tutorials . A new hosting company with a well laid out tutorials and walk-throughs gives a better impression to the clients. It has been observed that, there is a 60% reduction in the number of support queries coming in, once the above tools are provided. What's advised is, instead of trying for a 24x7 support system running, concentrate on providing self-help-support for customers. A customer would appreciate a site that says "Customer Support from 9am to 5pm" along with self-help support documentation rather than going for the more expensive 24/7 support when your business is small. With competitive pricing this would paint the company to be one run by a professional rather than a newbie. Willie Crawford has devised an amazing and professionally brilliant software for all new and advanced business owners to provide quality online customer support with ease. This software is called “The 'Three Pillars' Help Desk” which enables you run own web based Support Desk, helping you to automate and centralize all your customer support duties, while getting the most out of every minute that you spend interacting with customers. Visitors can either find the answer to their question in your knowledge base of Frequently Asked Questions, or they can create a new specific support request and receive a ticket to track it's progress. This online software has a feature rich interface and can boost any business with high quality customer service. For more details about this software visit here http://customer-
Quality support increases customer retention which is as important as new customer acquisition.There is no hard and fast rule on how to provide support. However for a startup webhosting company, its better to be aware of the options available. This article would show how effectively support can be provided with the limited resources available. Many of the ideas and points in this article would help all those who are presently stuck up running their businesses from their homes to foray into this business in a organized way and make it big. While deciding on how to provide the support, the same rules don't apply everywhere. Larger hosting companies should be handled differently from smaller hosts. If you are a newbie ask yourself the following questions. 1) How many hours can you spend daily for providing support ? 2) What is the level of technical skill you have ? 3) What is your support budget? 4) Are your clients more technically proficient than you are? 5) What are the technical services you would like to provide ? The answers to the above question will help in deciding what support system is to be used . Lets see how the answers to each question would influence the plan. 1) How many hours can you spend daily, for providing support? A proper customer system can give you more time to spend on other departments like marketing and sales. So when you are designing the customer support system, you should decide on how much time you should be spending on providing support. What happens if there is not much time available for support? For a startup company, spending just 3-4 hrs ( not necessarily in one go ), would be more than enough. Since there would be only few support queries coming in, it wouldn't be difficult to handle all queries . But here instead of concentrating on replying to each email or phone call, start building a solid self help options for customers . Build a knowledge base and also provide tutorials . A new hosting company with a well laid out tutorials and walk-throughs gives a better impression to the clients. It has been observed that, there is a 60% reduction in the number of support queries coming in, once the above tools are provided. What's advised is, instead of trying for a 24x7 support system running, concentrate on providing self-help-support for customers. A customer would appreciate a site that says "Customer Support from 9am to 5pm" along with self-help support documentation rather than going for the more expensive 24/7 support when your business is small. With competitive pricing this would paint the company to be one run by a professional rather than a newbie. Willie Crawford has devised an amazing and professionally brilliant software for all new and advanced business owners to provide quality online customer support with ease. This software is called “The 'Three Pillars' Help Desk” which enables you run own web based Support Desk, helping you to automate and centralize all your customer support duties, while getting the most out of every minute that you spend interacting with customers. Visitors can either find the answer to their question in your knowledge base of Frequently Asked Questions, or they can create a new specific support request and receive a ticket to track it's progress. This online software has a feature rich interface and can boost any business with high quality customer service. For more details about this software visit here http://customer-
