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Looking for outsourced support recommendations
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Looking for outsourced support recommendations

smansman Member
edited April 2014 in General

Looking for some recommendations for general trouble ticket support for Linux VPS clients. Not looking for super cheap but should be inexpensive. Mostly to cover US evenings and weekends etc.

I'd rather that you post publicly instead of PM's.

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Comments

  • I don't have any recommendations but I would be more than happy to help with support.

  • Why don't you go with GVH? Everyone loves them here. I'm sure you'll find some amazing reviews. Jks

    Thanked by 1GIANT_CRAB
  • What times are you looking for? I know you said US evenings but you need to be more specific.

  • @alexanderu said:
    Why don't you go with GVH? Everyone loves them here. I'm sure you'll find some amazing reviews. Jk

    We've never offered outsourced support and never will. I think that our popularity is fairly decent here seeing as the majority of our overall orders come from LET.

  • @Sman - one word - Don't!

    Outsourced support is always a disaster unless you pay decent money for it. These 'ticket shacks' are often staffed by inexperienced idiots who don't know one end of a computer from another.

    In almost 50% of the companies Yomura has acquired over the years, the acquired company was using an outsourced support service and having trawled the responses, they range from 'Standby we are investigating your issue' to 'can you reboot your computer'.

    I would say 80% of tickets were incorrectly answered and probably 80% ended up with irate customers.

    This experience is based on two or three dozen different support providers across India, Philippines, Egypt, USA and Canada (though I think those were just Indians in India pretending to be in the Canada).

    Thanked by 1linuxthefish
  • smansman Member
    edited April 2014

    @MarkTurner said:

    I am willing to pay more and just some sort of response is all I want. So saying "standby we are investigating" until we come online during the day isn't necessarily a bad thing. People do use these outsourcing companies successfully on a part time basis.

  • MarkTurnerMarkTurner Member
    edited April 2014

    @sman then use an autoresponder, its equally as insulting to your customer and more reliable; and you save money!

  • GIANT_CRABGIANT_CRAB Member
    edited April 2014

    GreenValueHost said: We've never offered outsourced support and never will. I think that our popularity is fairly decent here seeing as the majority of our overall orders come from LET.

    He was probably recommending the outsourced support team that you guys use.

  • Mahfuz_SS_EHLMahfuz_SS_EHL Host Rep, Veteran

    I can troubleshoot the support tickets for your company as I have 3 Years of Experiences. Also, I live in Bangladesh (GMT +6), so, I'll be able to reply your tickets on Weekends, I think so. Rest depends on Time Zone. You may PM Me or I can do so :)

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • jnguyenjnguyen Member
    edited April 2014

    @GIANT_CRAB said:
    He was probably recommending the outsourced support team that you guys use.

    We don't use outsourced support anymore. It was a horrible experience. Our support is now 100% in-house, based in the US.

    Outsourced support doesn't work. Haven't you noticed how things have gotten better for us after we switched to an entirely in house team?

    Thanked by 2MarkTurner netomx
  • @GreenValueHost - Its the only way to do it. Then when something goes wrong you can deal with it directly. My experience of so called 'Dedicated' support team of one rather large company was that they were 'Dedicated' to two separate companies that we bought within days of each other! Not bad for $2k/month

    I've seen all varieties of this type of service. Out of all of them, not one has been satisfactory. I wouldn't want to be supported by these people.

    One well known outsource support company (India/Germany/USA but I think its actually all India) - told a number of customers of one company we bought to take a backup of their sites because they were going to delete them to fix a DNS problem. The affected customers obediently backed their cPanel accounts, they terminated them and then told them to reupload, which the customers did. Problem didn't go away. So they had these dozen or so customers doing this 2-3 times before the customers started cancelling.

    The actual problem was one of the cPanel Remote nameservers had fallen over, but they didn't understand how that worked or even bothered to check.

    I've seen most of the outsourced helpdesk services and without exception they are destructive. The people are not suited to the job they do and they lack any technical expertise to even debug a DSL connection.

    If you can't do it yourself or within your company, you may as well save the money and tell customers your support hours and tell them outside of that they are SOL. Its better than abusing them with these horrendous "services"

  • smansman Member
    edited April 2014

    So nobody has any recommendations? You can tell me how much they all suck all day long but that is not what I am asking. I know a lot of you guys use them because...it is lowendtalk after all.

  • iKeyZiKeyZ Veteran

    @sman said:
    So nobody has any recommendations? You can tell me how much they all suck all day long but that is not what I am asking. I know a lot of you guys use them because...it is lowendtalk after all.

    I'd be interested to know how many people here do use them.

  • smansman Member

    @iKeyZ said:
    I'd be interested to know how many people here do use them.

    Probably a lot aren't willing to admit it.

    Thanked by 1Mark_R
  • I'm pulling for @ehostlab so that's my recommendation. I hope someone gives him a chance. :)

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited April 2014

    As an exception, Prometeus/Iperweb use outsourced support and willing to admit it. My company provides such services, I think there are people with half a brain outside US sometimes, as you well point out around here, most foreigners are idiots, but you can find one or two people on this planet outside US which can reply a ticket at levels close to acceptable, even at the very high US standards.

    sman said: Probably a lot aren't willing to admit it.

  • ATHKATHK Member

    Maounique said: but you can find one or two people on this planet outside US which can reply a ticket at levels close to acceptable, even at the very high US standards.

    I find this very offensive.... not everything revolves around the US so get your head out of your patriotic arse and have some sort of respect for the "idiots" that live in other countries ..

    Jerk.

    Thanked by 1Mark_R
  • ATHKATHK Member

    @Zen said:
    He's Romanian.. I think.

    Still offensive regardless..

  • XuHiXuHi Member

    Was looking at a company the other week: www.bestserversupport.com

    Not sure how they will handle support requests as they are based in India... Maybe a bit of communication difficulty when replying.... Can't really say as I haven't used them.

    They seem really cheap for what you get.... The website looks legit and even has a staff page: www.bestserversupport.com/team.html

    Like already mentioned just be careful as half these companies don't have a clue what they are doing.

  • wychwych Member

    I would be careful about outsourcing support, not saying don't just pay close attention to how the tickets are responded to.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @GreenValueHost said:
    Outsourced support doesn't work. Haven't you noticed how things have gotten better for us after we switched to an entirely in house team?

    In all honesty mate, no. At least one of your support guys is incapable of A: reading the ticket and B: making replies of more than one word. I asked a multiple choice question once and he answered 'Yes' :-/

    Thanked by 1linuxthefish
  • Many use them, little admit to it. ;)

  • @ATHK said:

    Jerk.

    ahhhh i think @Maounique is saying exactly that - there are actually believe it or not the odd person who knows what they are doing and is not american. i think you have misunderstood and over-reacted...

    Thanked by 1Maounique
  • @Nekki said:
    In all honesty mate, no. At least one of your support guys is incapable of A: reading the ticket and B: making replies of more than one word. I asked a multiple choice question once and he answered 'Yes' :-/

    Could you PM me your ticket ID please?

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @GreenValueHost said:
    Could you PM me your ticket ID please?

    I can, but why? You got involved in the ticket originally after I responded to the 'yes', so you already knew about the incident I'm referring to.

  • jnguyenjnguyen Member
    edited April 2014

    @Nekki

    Just for quality assurance purposes.

    We have thousands of clients and receive around 50 tickets a day -- I can't remember everyone nor can I remember your ticket

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited April 2014

    ATHK said: Jerk.

    IIRC that is not allowed, calling names, I mean.
    I do not protest that, though, but I wonder how someone not able to see the sarcasm well hidden there got to live past 10.
    I envy you, your parents or whoever cares for you, does a very good job.

    Thanked by 1serverian
  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @GreenValueHost said:

    Just for quality assurance purposes.

    We have thousands of clients and receive around 50 tickets a day -- I can't remember everyone nor can I remember your ticket

    My point was that that you would have seen that the responses were unacceptable at the time you responded to the ticket, so if you were going to deal with it surely you would have done so then.

    Next time I'm in the client area, I'll grab the ticket number for you.

  • smansman Member
    edited April 2014

    As the saying goes, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. It has nothing to do with what country they are in. There are perfectly capable people in India with excellent english.

    I think the same argument can be made for insourcing vs outsourcing. You are going to get the quality you are willing to pay for regardless.

    Thanked by 1Shoaib_A
  • The skills are one thing you gotta worry about.
    Another thing is are you going to trust the off-shore support group to access your systems?
    What kind of binding legal obligations/contracts are you willing go through with them before you hand over your customer's database over to someone you've never seen and the chance is you never will.
    I understand we're talking about LEB hosting here, but still think twice before you partner with someone, be it on-shore or off-shore.

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