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Ticket Reponse Times
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Ticket Reponse Times

serverbearserverbear Member
edited August 2012 in General

We've been thinking about a few ways to benchmark this, lets forget the technical details for now.

Let me ask 2 questions:

As a user would ticket response times per host factor into your purchase decision?

Hosts, would you allow avg ticket response time benchmarks to be posted? Avg Response, Response by time of day, Day of week etc.**

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Comments

  • Not following you @Randy, but for example via the WHMCS API you can get the Ticket Creation time & the time of the response. So technically you know the time it took.

  • @Zen said: Get working on that WHMCS plugin buddy :)

    Glad, i am moving back to WHMCS

  • @serverbear said: Not following you @Randy, but for example via the WHMCS API you can get the Ticket Creation time & the time of the response. So technically you know the time it took.

    apologies. i understand what you meant now, edited out. (kinda sleepy sorry)

  • Ticket response time means nothing. Whether your problem was solved is what is important. And even better is to have the problem solved or avoided even before you open a ticket, so you don't need to open a ticket in the first place.
    Imagine a reply one minute after you open a ticket:

    Dear Sir,
    I will escalate your matter to our admin

    And then you wait 2 days for "the admin" to eventually do something. How does this help you?

    Thanked by 1Infinity
  • @rds100 Very valid point, I could imagine that if someone knew their response times were being monitored it might attract that sort of behavior.

    You could track:

    Time to respond
    Number of tickets needed to resolve
    Avg time to resolve

  • There is a WHMCS plugin for this.

  • I prefer very stable providers where I don't need to file support tickets.

    I haven't had any problems so far with the ff: prometeus, buyvm, hostigation, allsimple, chicagovps

  • TazTaz Member

    If I outsource support to some 3rd world country and I can assure you a 2 minute response time 24/7. Now don't know if that will fix your issue in 2 min since those support staff neither have access to our system nor have any idea about what to do (unless well trained but still).

    Thats my point. Quality is better than quantity.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    We have this on our website but it's only for the last 10 tickets for better accuracy.

  • serverbearserverbear Member
    edited August 2012

    @jcaleb I prefer very stable providers where I don't need to file support tickets

    Could get very interesting showing # of tickets per paying customer per month.

  • jcalebjcaleb Member
    edited August 2012

    @serverbear said: Could get very interesting showing # of tickets per paying customer per month.

    That would be much better I guess. The less tickets, the more stable maybe? But need to exclude other tickets, such as sales, billing, and other clarifications

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @serverbear said: Could get very interesting showing # of tickets per paying customer per month.

    True but that would only be accurate for normal customers. We have some abnormal clients that handle tickets very differently than how they are supposed to be which makes things difficult (both to support and to track accurately).

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2012

    It's hard to judge. A provider with little knowledge and a lot of free time may appear great due to volume of tickets, which could do little to reflect why the tickets are being put in. Have to consider a lot of factors.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @jcaleb said: The less tickets, the more stable maybe?

    We still get A LOT of tickets asking us where our servers are located despite having the answer on almost every location on our website.

  • TazTaz Member
    edited August 2012

    @serverbear said: Could get very interesting showing # of tickets per paying customer per month.

    ->#1.Sir, I kno understand linux. First time vps. How do I install Apache.

    ->#2.Sir, I kno understand ur language. never managed server but played on my friends ftp. How can I install wordpress?

    Carry on. That number increases pretty soon till provider will say

    -> Sir, we no longer want your business. Please take your business to our competitor. Thank you.

  • @KuJoe said: We still get A LOT of tickets asking us where our servers are located despite having the answer on almost every location on our website.

    Yes, there should be accounting for valid tickets only. Which is hard and can only be done manually.

  • its hard to define, a user opens 3 tickets after his first was not responded in 1 minutes

  • @NinjaHawk said: ->#1.Sir, I kno understand linux. First time vps. How do I install Apache.

    ->#2.Sir, I kno understand ur language. never managed server but played on my friends ftp. How can I install wordpress?

    Carry on. That number increases pretty soon till provider will say

    -> Sir, we no longer want your business. Please take your business to our competitor. Thank you.

    I tried the hosting business once and you describe my experience fairly well. I quit on the 2nd day.

    Thanked by 1Taz
  • @black said: said: ->#1.Sir, I kno understand linux. First time vps. How do I install Apache.

    ->#2.Sir, I kno understand ur language. never managed server but played on my friends ftp. How can I install wordpress?
    Carry on. That number increases pretty soon till provider will say
    -> Sir, we no longer want your business. Please take your business to our competitor. Thank you.
    I tried the hosting business once and you describe my experience fairly well. I quit on the 2nd day.

    users, dont seem to get what is Self Managed, and they complaint when we dont help them install what they want.

    that being said, i guess we all can go beyond our limits and help those "users" to install things

  • TazTaz Member

    Well let me be a bit honest, even though we are unmanaged provider, but that doesn't mean we will throw you out because of those basic questions. We will try to help our users as much as we an if we have time. I have personally secured and optimized bunch of our users vps. But it is the way you ask and when you ask. We will not do the above for every single users but if you ask, we will direct you to the right source. But sometimes, people starts to get a bit annoying and we end up breaking balls.

  • prometeusprometeus Member, Host Rep

    I don't think that tickets experience can be expressed only with numbers. Expecially in the low end market.
    Most of the providers here are small companies or one man show, and this mean there isn't a level 1 staff wich respond to tickets as monkeys with the main goal to keep sla tickets statistics but without any real help for the user.
    Yes, you can get slower response average from us, but often one single response after a few hours solve the problem or is more helpful for you.
    :)

    Thanked by 1ErawanArifNugroho
  • AsadAsad Member

    @black said: I tried the hosting business once and you describe my experience fairly well. I quit on the 2nd day.

    This pretty much applies to anything that involved IT and customer service.

    Thanked by 1Randy
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @AsadHaider said: This pretty much applies to anything that involved IT and customer service.

    Yes. You occasionally have that kind of users. Whenever someone new joins the company, i have a look at him/her and already know how much will have to "run" to keep them satisfied.
    After a while, when they get to know the procedures in place, everything settles, but can be a very hard time.
    I imagine in "ticketing" it is a similar issue. Once the user got everything in place, will probably stop bothering you. Be it managed or unmanaged.
    M

  • RandyRandy Member
    edited August 2012

    @Maounique said: Yes. You occasionally have that kind of users. Whenever someone new joins the company, i have a look at him/her and already know how much will have to "run" to keep them satisfied.

    After a while, when they get to know the procedures in place, everything settles, but can be a very hard time.
    I imagine in "ticketing" it is a similar issue. Once the user got everything in place, will probably stop bothering you. Be it managed or unmanaged.
    M

    well, if you do what the customer wanted, i am sure he will stop sending requests ,

    if its fully managed, i think its not an issue for them to ask support from their provider.

    that is part of business, go beyond your limits and make the customer happy.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @Randy said: that is part of business, go beyond your limits and make the customer happy.

    Indeed.
    M

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @Randy said: that is part of business, go beyond your limits and make the customer happy.

    Until it starts impacting the business.

    Thanked by 1Infinity
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @KuJoe said: Until it starts impacting the business.

    perfectly true.
    M

  • Well - do any of you think this would become an industry standard? I think only a few people would show these stats anyway.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    @Corey said: I think only a few people would show these stats anyway.

    Transparency is key. I'll look at getting a page setup to display our ticket statistics although it's only relative to us and not a way to measure our service (just our response and queues).

  • Only skimmed this thread, but what if you did the average time of response and average response rating?

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