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That depends on the provider. If its a company in terms of being registered, providing a real address and with real employees I take into consideration that they are bound to the legal working conditions layed out by the law. That means reduced response time on the weekend and holydays -- if at all. Then again, if it's a one-man-show, I expect to get faster replies simply because his client base is much smaller and I have the fear that if I don't hear from him soon enough he might be gone for good.
2 working days for low priority tickets, 12 hours for medium ones, 2 hours in working hours and 6 in other for high priority tickets.
@kylix interesting reply. But what if the one man show sticks to office hours schedules and not let the vps business ruin his day at the beach or beers at the bar?
You can do that, of course. But then again as a sole entrepreneur you are more likely to stand your man in the office. Simply because it's generating your living. Normally the free time you have is very much limited as a one-person-business. And then again the holydays are more like a legal restriction to not keep your employees like slaves. The situation is quite different for the sole entrepreneur as he invested his property into his business, the employee does not. So I guess the former has much more interest in working for his business than the latter.
If a ticket goes unread for more than 2 hours then the company needs to rethink their support strategy.
Damn!! Why are you on the "wrong side" of US? :-)
We hope to be on both sides of the US in the future so there will be no wrong side.
"company" is the key word here. Under "company" I understand >= 3 people working there.
A company can be comprised of a single person though.
So how should I expect a reply in 2 hours on a new ticket when a man needs to sleep 8 hours a day?
These companies have other benefits and are good for definite tasks.
@breton
My doc says at least 6 hours uninterrupted sleep or you will start running into problems, The brain needs rest.
is it good if i put logo/information in our site? like :
logo1 = we are online
logo2 = offline
logo3 = sleeping
logo4 = on vacation
logo5 = etc
That could be the point. Are one-man-companies trustable then?
I guess, firstly you need to ask yourself would you host any of your content in one man hosting company, I guess the answer would be no...
It is really funny @Mon5t3r logo4 = on vacation, logo3 = sleeping...Also, do not forget to put title="Sleeping" or "Vacations, will come back someday" :DD
@Starwind yeah.. just want to be honest provider..
let me do this in next month.. :P
right, so you think that you will build the customer base by doing this? Also, how many people are working in your web hosting company (or is it you only)? My question was would you be interested to host your content in one man company? Me personally not...
It's fairly easy to not be a 1 man operation these days. Not every staff member needs to be a tech, but having a human review each ticket when it comes in is critical to support. Most companies can get by with a single Level 2-3 tech while a handful of customer service reps filter out the "server is down" tickets from the "reset my password" ones.
I typed out a long post about Secure Dragon and how we handle 24x7 support with 2 people but then I realized it looked to much like a sales pitch so I will try to refrain from mentioning SD.
@Starwind No i'm not a one man show. but mostly i take care all international (outside Indonesia) client. right now we have 2 fixed staff and 1 part timer. and yes, i'm not going to run this business alone.
Absolutely.
First, owners of big companies can stop paying their staff salary too.
Second, I don't think that Ъ-linux-admins are in support teams of middle-sized (3-15) companies.
A couple of weeks ago support of one big russian hosting company had no clue why I couldn't enter their freebsd server via ssh and promised "to pass my question to their admin", whom I haven't received the answer from yet (though I found the solution by myself). My clients had a shared hosting account with them. I don't think that this situation could happen with one-man-company, because it is usually ran by specialists in the corresponding field.
logo2 = offline
logo3 = sleeping
logo4 = on vacation
logo5 = etc
lol
I like this one
If you want to sell your hosting or services in general, you never ever show these things like on vacations, etc. You can be honest with client showing him offline logo only. To be too honest will get you 0 sales
when I joined their team as moderator.
That is the truth that you can't ignore. I have started my hosting business 1 year ago, I started alone, but right now we are 5 people working on sales, support, etc. 24/7 no holidays. Also, I am sure that if you want to run a proper company you need to have reliable DC. By the way one year ago I even did not realized that I will get involved in web hosting business, but everything started from free hosting account in host1free.com
The answer is "yes" for me. Automated backups rock, you know.
@breton completely did not understood your thoughts...could you explain what exactly do you mean?
Once I'll make an experiment - I want to try to establish "honest hosting" company and to show clients everything, like load on the node, number of VPS-es on the node, bandwidth usage, support availability etc.
Big companies can be slow and sluggish. Small companies can be reliable and good.
well, yes I agree with you, but showing that you are sleeping or on vacations not a good idea...This would be too much. Ok, just put yourself as a customer and try to imagine. You visit some sort of hosting website and you see ON VACATIONS...BRB
well what would you say about that company?
When I said "trustable", I clearly meant: stable enough for a production server!
There is also a misunderstanding between different level of support. As @Kujoe said, 2 hours is a good timing for an answer, 24 hours/day & 365 days/year... But it does not mean the solution will always be found in these 2 hours!
I am not a provider, just an adviser.... But I will never risk my customers (maybe my own testing-platform vps) on a "on vacation" banner!
Answer in 24 hours would be nice and after the first reply to the ticket I expect basically priority over the other unanswered tickets.
Then that person obviously isn't serious about their business. It takes sacrifice to run a business well as a small operator, if you are not willing to make them, grab the brown bag and go back having a job.
You know the poster is only asking about a response, not resolution. A small provider could trade off a free hosting account to a knowledgeable cleint who has first level support access. Anything more advanced than that gets answered with a "I'm going to have to pass this to level 2" and the client is happy to see action on their ticket.
Um, I did that for the first few years.
+1 @drmike, these days it is amazing how much having a person to ackowledge a client's ticket will improve your quality of support for clients. While a resolution in 1 hour is better, a 1 hour response and 24 hour resolution beats a 22 hour response and 23 hour resolution any day of the week.