Customer Service in Hosting, Part 3: Customer Support From the Inside

As part of my role in Engineering, I’m the guy who ends up with all the next-to-impossible support requests. It may surprise you to learn that what makes these problems hard to fix often has little to do with the actual situation at hand. The biggest “technical challenge” I find is almost always insufficient data. And insufficient data usually stems from not being able to clearly understand from the customer what the problem is.

On behalf of customer support technicians everywhere, here are some tips to make sure that you always get the best possible help from your support team, in any company: Read more

Customer Service in Hosting, Part 2: The Scope of “Support”

In the world of hosting customer support, “supported software and applications” is a phrase on the minds of many potential—and current—customers. Does my host support the software I am running on my server? Will they help me if it’s not working?

Truly supporting applications doesn’t simply mean supporting the software itself, though. It means managing the complex interaction between disparate software. This is way more important than any simple list of software that a web host can back away from in a pinch.

Let me give you an example: A lot of our customers use WordPress. At our suggestion, many of them install a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. Caching engines basically optimize server requests—decreasing the time it takes a page to load—on websites high in dynamic content by serving up flat data that looks dynamic. In our example, the client is running WordPress with WP Super Cache installed. So far, so good!

A few months after initial setup, the customer sees his traffic increasing, slowing down the server. He reads independently about the benefits of the PHP caching software APC and installs it himself. Not only does the site not get any faster, but it is now throwing up fatal errors left and right. So what happened?

In this case, the client didn’t realize that the default configuration for WP Super Cache does not interact with APC. He needed to configure both of these caching engines to work together. Also, months ago, he was worried about his PHP code being stolen so he installed Zend Optimizer, not knowing that APC and Zend Optimizer are completely incompatible. We’re now talking about the interaction of four pieces of software and how they work together and against one another on a server.

So: what’s ServInt’s responsibility here?  Who “owns” the problem?

Read more

Customer Service in Hosting, Part 1: the Expectation of Service

Editor’s Note: With this post, our Director of Managed Services, Jim Tricarico, kicks off a three-part series on customer service in the hosting industry with a post about customer service from the hosting side. Check back in coming weeks for posts on the meaning of “supported” software and applications and the five things to always remember when submitting a support ticket.

Customer service is a tricky thing. Customers often judge the quality of care they receive based on how little they interact with a service representative. They often think that the quicker their problem is resolved, the better care they must be receiving—and, conversely, that they must be experiencing bad customer service when it takes more than a few hours to bring up a site that has gone down.

The truth may surprise you: often it’s the calls that take hours—or even days—that show you when your customer service team is giving you the best they possibly can. Let me explain, and in the process maybe shed a little light on how customer service in the hosting industry works.

To begin with, here’s a hard truth: sometimes our customers’ problems are so far outside the scope of our normal activities that there’s nothing we can do but say sorry and point them someplace else. For example, as odd as it may seem, more than once we’ve gotten requests from customers to help them troubleshoot the speed of their home Internet connection!

Pointing those customers in a different direction for their answers is easy because it’s clearly the best way to get them a quick solution. The gray area is when customers ask us to troubleshoot third-party software they’ve installed themselves, but can’t get adequate support for from the manufacturer. When these situations come up we try our best, but — well, maybe an example will help illustrate the difficulty of the situation.

I remember a customer whose site kept crashing. He was using a piece of software we didn’t officially support—and the sum total of the help he received from the software manufacturer was, “It’s not our fault, call your host.” We didn’t see the cause right away, but we agreed to work with the customer to troubleshoot the issue and spent a week peeling back one symptom at a time until the root cause was identified. In the end, this ticket took seven days to close out and had a total of 147 comments in it between our MST and the customer and from one tech to another. And yet, because this customer’s foremost concern was simply how long it was taking to fix the problem, he complained loudly about the customer support he had received.

Now, in this example we could have—and maybe we should have—spent more time explaining the causes of his site crashes and all the incremental steps we were taking to solve each one, but this is a delicate balancing act. Some customers want to know everything that is going on all the time, while others just want it fixed. Knowing how much a customer wants to hear when the problem is not yet solved can be tricky in the heat of the moment.

Make no mistake, there are incompetent and lazy hosts out there who run slipshod customer service operations. But you won’t find them by simply looking at how long it takes for them to “fix” your problem. If they’re continually trying new solutions and eliminating possible causes, they are doing exactly what they should be doing.

If you want to know if your hosts’ customer service is superior, ask yourself these questions:

1. How many questions do they ask me when I have a problem? (The more the better.)
2. Am I asking them to fix something that is completely out of their scope of support: unsupported software, issues with connectivity outside of the host’s network, etc? (Have realistic expectations about what your host can and will help you with.)
3. Are they willing to at least look at my problem whether or not all of my applications are “supported software?” (A good host will acknowledge that there’s often no way to know the cause unless they’re willing to at least take a look.)
4. If I ask, do they try to explain why something happened so that I can prevent it myself in the future? (A wise and valuable trait in superior customer service operations.)
5. Have they ever simply told me they can’t figure it out and I’m on my own? (If they said this regarding “supported” software, it’s time to look for a new host.)

Photo by Jeremiah Ro

Introducing Jim Tricarico, ServInt’s New Director of Managed Services

[Editor's Note: ServInt cast a wide net when looking to fill this role. We received hundreds of resumes and interviewed dozens of exceptionally qualified candidates. We were looking for individuals who were committed to -- and possibly a little obsessed with -- exceptional customer service. I therefore shouldn't have been that surprised when an employee from within our ranks rose to to the top of the pack and convinced us that he was the right man for the job. Jim is a veteran of our Managed Services Team and he easily stood out with his keen understanding of the day to day challenges facing our NOC. With his terrific analytical mind and wealth of ideas to further improve the division, I'm ecstatic that Jim is taking the reins of our MST and look forward to his leadership. -Christian]

I’ve been a computer enthusiast for a really, really long time. I started tinkering with hardware as a child, and by the time I was 14 I was running my own bulletin board, my interests continued on to more complex projects in highschool and college that eventually led me to ServInt. So, I think it’s fair to say that I’m passionate about technology, and as that technology has grown more and more complex over time, so have my personal technological interests.

As ServInt’s new Director of Managed Services, my job is to make our support even better. Here, in story form, is how I’m gonna do it.

I’ve been at ServInt for nearly 6 years, starting as a Tier 1 Support Technician on the front lines of our Managed Services Team. It was there that I got my first taste of the hosting experience. Diving headfirst into UNIX and trying to fix what were sometimes incredibly ambiguous quirks was  appealing to me. Needless to say, no two challenges are alike, and helping people overcome technical problems and get back to making their businesses thrive was – and still is – an incredibly rewarding experience.

While the challenge is definitely invigorating, what’s really important is ensuring that our support experience is as pleasant a process as possible for everyone. When it comes to your business, we get that there is no such thing as a small problem. Our clients come in at all skill levels, from hosting novice to server expert. Whether you’re capable of compiling a Linux kernel with a toothpick and chewing gum, or your an aspiring blogger trying to tell your story, our Managed Services Team will help you get up and running.

The ServInt MST is committed to tackling issues as quickly and as effectively as possible. At ServInt, we do everything we can to get it right the first time because for us we take service personally. Overcoming intricate issues is part of our collective DNA.

At the end of the day, my goal is to simply uphold the core tenets of our Managed Services Team.  Our job is to ensure every customer experience is efficient, fast, and most importantly, accurate. So sit back and relax, your server is up and running.

~ Jim

Explaining ServInt’s New KickStart Team

When I started at ServInt more than six years ago, one of the first lessons I learned was just how critical first impressions were to the customer experience. ServInt’s new Kickstart Team, a division of our Managed Services Team, is committed to making hosting a website as painless a process as possible. Here’s a little background on who we are and why we do what we do.

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Sinking A Birdie With Sports by Brooks: A ServInt Success Story

Generally speaking, sports reporting tends to focus on stats, facts, and predictions.

Sure, there are always exceptions. There are plenty of human interest stories on doping and cheating; but tune into ESPN at any given hour and you’re more likely to get a breakdown of a particular team’s performance than you are the juicy gossip behind the stars themselves.

So its no surprise that Brooks Melchoir, the man behind SPORTSbyBROOKS, found a lucrative niche in sports gossip reporting.

Like all of us, professional athletes have complex motivations for doing what they do, they straddle a line between performing for themselves and performing for the adulation of fans. Because they are so often larger than life, the mistakes they make tend to be larger than life, too.

So, when SPORTSbyBROOKS broke the now infamous Tiger Woods story over Thanksgiving weekend in November of last year, his already incredibly popular site was in trouble.

Read more

ServInt, 15 Years In the Making

15 years ago, I founded ServInt.

The odds were very much against us at the outset.  I was 19 and I didn’t have any connections to the industry, much less the capital that would be necessary to start a company of our scope today.  What I lacked in funding, I made up for with sheer, unadulterated passion for building a rock solid business on the web.  In my mind, the only things we needed to be successful were a coherent vision and geek cred, and ServInt would have both in spades.

From the beginning, the difference between ServInt and the competition has always been our level of accountability.  We wanted businesses of all shapes and sizes to be able to trust us to ensure they stayed up and running.  The things that many folks take for granted, such as 24/7 support, were things we had to develop from the ground up…and when I say ground up, I mean me waking up at 3 am to update someone’s server in the next room. Ah, simpler times indeed.

Today, we have staff all over the U.S. serving customers from all over the world.  More than 30% of our customers are in Asia, and we continue to have a dominating presence in North America and Europe, we are a truly global company.  From our Managed Services Team in Virginia, to our network engineering teams in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and California, all the way to our Enterprise Sales teams in Michigan, it shows just how far we’ve come from the early days in ServInt’s infancy.

We’re a healthier, smarter, and faster company now than we’ve ever been, and these last 15 years have been a blast.

This year, we have a lot of really exciting projects we’re working on.  In the coming months, we’ll have new products competing in new markets, paving the way for a future that further enables businesses to grow, and keep growing, with ServInt.

Traditionally, a 15th anniversary is represented by a gift of crystal or a watch.  Both are symbols of longevity, rigidity, strength, and transparency.  Like a crystal, ServInt has a clear focus that has been shaped and refined by our experiences in this industry.  Like a watch, we have stood the test of time, and our product has an elegant complexity shaped by a combination of open source expertise and the attention to detail only true craftsmen could supply.

I think that image is fitting, and I want to personally thank all of you for trusting us with your business.  You are, and will continue to be, an integral part of our success.

Here’s to another 15 years.

Special Thanks to ServInt’s Managed Services Team for Weathering the Storm!

Some called it the “Snowpocalypse”, other called it the Blizzard of 2010.

But thanks to the talented technicians and engineers of ServInt’s Managed Services Team, we called it business as usual.

All of us at ServInt want to give a warm thank you to our very own Managed Services Team for their exemplary work. Their hard work made sure our thousands of customers stayed up and running during the most brutal blizzard Washington, D.C. has seen in decades.

MST members stayed overnight, and in some cases more than one night, at our Network Operations Center to help in case customers needed us. Network engineers also slept overnight at our Data centers in Washington, D.C. and Virginia to ensure our Dedicated Server customers, as well as our entire network, were intact throughout the fierce weather.

In preparation for the storm, ServInt supplied our support staff with ample provisions (and ample junk food) to make the best out of a less than desirable week. Our MST not only excelled, but they made it look easy.

Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication guys and gals!

Photo by Xydexx Squeakypony.

While My Plastic Guitar Gently Weeps

Everybody has their passions and I wear mine on my sleeve.

I am a huge dork on two very dorky subjects, IT customer service and support (seriously – I study up on the theories and techniques – it’s scary) and music.

Today the two conflict.

You see, we’ve got some pretty cool stuff going on around here at ServInt that’s keeping me really busy. I am shoulder-deep in a stack of exciting work on some cool future projects we’ll be able to announce in the coming months.

And my project passions are keeping me from the other thing I really want to be doing – skipping work altogether to play Beatles Rock Band and listen to remasters of The Beatles’ entire back catalog. I spent WAY too much money and ordered both. Both come out today, and I’ve been counting the days for weeks.

I’m a major music geek in general, but The Beatles captured my imagination long ago. In the late ’90s I even helped start a tech-themed Beatles cover band called ‘The ISPtles’. No joke! We wrote song parodies and recorded (long lost) demos for an ISPCon tradeshow party that thankfully never actually materialized.

We ACTUALLY had a bunch of songs. Our biggest ‘hits’ were “I Want To Hold Your Palm(TM)” and “BSD”, our ode to Unix sung to the tune of “Let It Be”.

As an act of kindness, I won’t mention what other 2 current members of ServInt’s staff rounded out our quartet. They can out themselves if they want to share in my public embarrassment.

Has anybody else tried, even as a joking flight of fancy, to combine their disparate passions like that? Let us know! And is anybody a Beatles fan like me, sitting at work with way too much to do when you’d like to be at home? Let me know that too!

The best story as judged by myself and our tech savvy at-risk youth wins a ServInt T-Shirt. Let’s hear it in the comments, on Twitter, or our Facebook page!

Don’t let me down.

Photo by dunechaser.

Re-Introducing ServInt’s Managed Services Team

We’ve just made our world-class support a little more world class.

The goal of this project was to further increase our capability to deliver fervent, quality support 24-hours-a-day, 365 days a year. We’ve leveraged the expertise of our existing staff and increased the size of our Managed Services Team (MST) by 40% this year alone. By spreading this wealth of new faces and new talent throughout the day — and night — we can improve support reliability and consistency around the clock.  Not only does that help our North and South American customers sleep more  soundly at night, it also gives our international client-base access to the same high-level of service that they need and expect when the sun rises in their neck of the woods.

It’s easy to go out and interview candidates with what, on paper, look like relevant skills.  But finding intelligent, motivated people that are eager to learn, love being part of a successful team, and relish the satisfaction of providing excellent service to people that need it are what we look for in our MST members. That’s the combination that has always worked best for us and we’ve been fortunate to be able to stick to that formula right up to the present day.

Over time, our support has focused less on simply fixing an issue, and more about educating the client on what went wrong, why it happened, and how we are going to fix it.  The days of our department just “fixing stuff” are fading fast.  While there will always be a need for that kind of service and support, and we’ll always be there for folks who need a quick “repair”, it is equally important to prove that we’re prepared to translate our knowledge to clients in a way that’s easily digested and deployed.

Alongside this new initiative, we’re developing a long requested documentation project that will act as a consistently up-to-date repository for best practices for those who want more input into their server experience. This will be a purely informational project and we will continue to focus the vast majority of our resources on live, in-house, 24-7 support.

So, at the end of the day, this is an upgrade and not a reinvention. Time and time again, we’ve been told that our support is the crux of our business and it’s why people stay with ServInt for so long.  When we took a long hard look at our support to see what we could improve, we came to the fairly obvious conclusion that the soul of the department was its people, and with our latest batch of brilliant team members we aim to keep it that way.