What About Customer and Technical Support?

Although this is near the bottom of the list in terms of what to look for in a web hosting company, these are two of the most important aspects. Customer service and technical service are vital to the overall operation of your website, although few people realize this.

For example, if the site goes down in the middle of the night, or on the weekend, is there a number that you can call to make a report and have the service restored? If there is some other type of technical issue, how is it reported, and how is it handled? What about billing issues?

All of this matters, and if the customer service and technical support are shoddy, using this web host could turn into an absolute stressful nightmare for you. Let’s look at each aspect of this service:

Customer Service: Customer service is typically the department or person that you will deal with when you initially establish your service. They are also the ones that you contact regarding billing issues. Past the initial setup and any billing issues or changes that may crop up during the course of the service, the rest of your contact with the web hosting company will probably be with technical support.

Ideally, the customer service department will be well run. If it is, there will be few or no billing issues at all. The customer service staff should be friendly and willing to help you with your problem or concern. However, note that customer service can rarely help you out with technical issues. Instead, they should transfer you to the technical department, or direct your correspondence to tech support. Customer service is rarely offered 24/7.

Technical Support: These are the guys that are supposed to get up in the middle of the night to fix your problem. These are the guys that will install your scripts. These are the guys that will cut off your service if you start exceeding bandwidth, although customer service is probably who you would contact to get the service turned back on. These guys can be your best friends, or your worst enemies.

Technical support should be offered 24 hours per day, seven days per week, including holidays. If it isn’t, find a web hosting service that does offer this, as there are so many that do that you shouldn’t have to settle for one that doesn’t.

Ask questions about the technical support staff, and get to know them a bit. What is their experience in this field? What are their skills? You should look at the tech support staff at your web hosting company just as you would look at a child care service for your child. After all, your website could very well become like a child to you, and you want to be sure that it has the best possible care, and that the staff knows what to do in the event of an emergency – and that they can be reached in such an event.

A good technical support staff will know about problems with your server long before you will – and should already be on top of things by the time that you notice, if you ever even get the chance to notice.

Dealing with Customer or Technical Support: You’ve probably been told, since you were a child, that you could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. This is absolutely true, and while the customer support and technical support staffs at your web hosting company are there to serve you, it is in your best interest to treat them with a healthy amount of respect and civility.

This doesn’t, by any means, mean that you should let them run all over you, or that shoddy service should go unnoticed and unmentioned. It means that when you treat people with healthy respect and decorum, they are more likely to take care of your problem quickly, to the absolute best of their ability.

On the other hand, if you want to call them up with guns blazing, screaming and cursing at them, they are more likely to work more slowly at fixing your problem. In terms of the technical issues that may be experienced, you must realize that humans actually have little control over technology.

Your site most likely didn’t stop working properly because a tech support guy wasn’t doing his job – it could be that a piece of hardware failed unexpectedly. This happens, and human error plays no role in it.

In terms of customer support, software (technology) is often used to handle billing matters. Sometimes, software goes haywire. You’ve had that happen yourself, on your own computer. Companies are not infallible in this area either. Software goes haywire, you might get double billed – if you call up and explain the situation, calmly, rationally, and with respect, the customer support team will do everything within their power to rectify the situation and make you happy.

On the other hand, not all customer support staffs and technical support staffs are made up of professionals. If you have tried to be respectful and reasonable, and have been met with less than the same, or with shoddy service, you need to complain to someone higher up the food chain at the company.

If the situation is not rectified at that point, you can assume that the entire service is shoddy, and it is time to consider going through the hassle of moving to a new web hosting company.