As a company specializing in outsourced support, we keep track of ticket flow trends. A metric that often attracts special attention of web hosts is the volume of tickets generated in non-business-hours. A concern sometimes posted by new web hosts is the necessity of a full 24/7 hosting support. Is it really required? Can't the tickets wait till morning when the staff gets back to office?
The answer in short is, you DO need a 24/7 hosting support desk, and here is why.
Lets start with the numbers. Non-business-hours receive about 15% to 20% of the total ticket volume(figures vary from host to host). This is quite a significant portion of the support traffic. This shows that at least 15% of your clients expect you to be online at all times.
Looking at the support category break down, 20% of the non-business-hours tickets are server alerts. These notifications are usually urgent in nature; that is, if you do not act on it immediately, it will start affecting the quality of your service. It is paramount that a live person be present to monitor these alerts, and take necessary immediate action to avoid deterioration of service.
The rest 80% of tickets during non-business-hours includes assistance in troubleshooting websites, configuring backups, and troubleshooting mail problems. Though arguably these issues can wait till business hours, these do represent a significant portion of webmasters who prefer to do their site maintenance after business hours. Not supporting them at their convenience would inevitably lead them into your competitors hands.
So, why are some web hosts reluctant to provide 24/7 hosting support?
Cost is cited as the main reason. The staff salary expense, infrastructure expense, bandwidth and electricity charges, etc would cost you a pretty penny. This is where a smart mix of in-house support and outsourced support can help you.
An ideal configuration would be take care of the support during day time by your in-house staff, and hand over the non-business-hours support to an outsourced support provider. For the support provider, since the same support team caters to multiple web hosts, the expense would be shared amongst different web hosts. The savings in cost allows the support provider to implement systems to maintain a higher quality of service. Eg: In the case of Bobcares, the shared structure allows us to implement quality monitoring systems, training systems and knowledgebases. These systems keeps continually improving the service quality, and your customers always gets world class care.
A true 24/7 hosting support results in higher customer retention, and gives you an edge in competitive marketing. It frees you up to do what you do best - growing your business.
Using an outsourced support partner gives you the flexibility to scale up as your business grows. For the support provider, the cost for scaling up will not be high, and you wont have to keep looking behind your back to see if everything is all right. Success stories of support partnership with Bobcares has seen customers growing from a single server web host to a data center in less than 5 years. As support volumes grow, a support partner might even be able to provide you with dedicated support resources handling solely your support. it then leads to opportunity to set custom performance targets, and greater control in support fine tuning.
With the competition in web hosting growing all the time, a true 24/7 hosting support is no longer an option, but a necessity. The good new is, with just a bit of right planning and focus, it is within the reach of any web host.
Cheers!
About the author
Visakh S is a senior software engineer at Bobcares. He has extensive experience in managing technical support teams of web hosting companies and data centers. He is passionate about systems engineering, and loves to get his hands dirty on systems automation. His free time is spent reading books and being with his family.