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Technical support options have emerged that
focus specifically on assisting hosting
companies using popular automation packages.
The new breed of outsourced customer care
specializes in not only responding to
technical support requests, but also in
maintaining hosting infrastructure.
By leveraging such comprehensive support
services, hosting operations can provide
technical support and professionally
maintain hosting environments without the
headache and expense of developing, staffing
and maintaining their own extensive,
internal help desks. At fast growing Web
hosting businesses, over 50 per cent of all
incoming inquiries are support requests.
These inquiries detract from the most
essential areas of the business, which are
sales and marketing. By outsourcing
technical support and the maintenance of
hosting infrastructure, a service provider
can increase the amount of time that it
dedicates to growing its business.
Web hosts also lower costs by outsourcing by
effectively externalizing staff. Most
average estimates peg support costs for
shared hosting services at 30 per cent of
revenue. Much of this revenue is consumed by
paying expensive IT salaries. In the realm
of shared hosting, which is a low-margin,
commodity business, allocating such a
substantial amount of financial resources
can mean the difference between
profitability and failure.
Outsourcing allows smaller hosting
operations to entirely eliminate the
necessity of hiring a dedicated system
administrator, giving them the opportunity
to lower salary and training costs. Often,
hosting companies can saving 50 per cent off
the 30 per cent revenue allocation for
support if they outsource, since they no
longer have to focus on staffing, providing
a basic salary or benefits. Support costs
are also reduced since hosting companies no
longer have to contend with the expensive
in-flux of telephone calls.
"The only major differentiator in the Web
hosting industry is how you treat you treat
your customers," says David Bitterman, Vice
President of Corporate Relations at CyLynx,
a notable outsourced customer care provider
that specializes in services for both ISPs
and Web hosts. "Everybody has the same
hosting packages that can be plugged into
their servers, so the main objective is to
improve service and increase revenue. Our
service allows service providers to focus on
marketing, which is what any Web host
operation needs to focus on, while we focus
on cost savings and decrease customer churn."
Indeed, the use of outsourced technical
support allows hosts to control the amount
of customer churn they experience. Consumers,
especially individuals and small businesses
expect timely and informative customer
support. Noting that the majority of a
host's clients come from this constituency,
support must be a central tenant of a
vendor's offerings.
Unfortunately, because most SME hosting
operations are small, often hosts cannot
effectively deal with incoming support
requests, especially if they are
experiencing rapid growth. The result is
usually an unsatisfied client base that does
not obtain timely responses to their support
inquiries. Customer churn occurs when
customers cannot obtain a desired level of
technical support. Most statistics have
pegged average churn rates at 10 to 25 per
cent. It is thus incumbent upon hosting
operators to establish effective and
efficient means of providing technical
support to their clients in order to satisfy
customer expectations. Service providers can
obtain higher levels of technical support if
they outsource their own support
infrastructure. By outsourcing technical
support functions, a host can actually
reduce customer costs while improving
customer satisfaction.
"It is usually more cost-effective to
utilize a third-party to get true, qualified
24/7 support," says Carmen Koop, chief
executive of HSphere Support, a support
company that specializes in providing
control panel support and infrastructure
management. "It is usually not possible to
hire a level 3 technician for under 10k a
month. Some companies just cannot justify
such a salary. Our services allow smaller
companies to leverage such skill sets."
HSphere Support is different in respect to
customer care since it not only provides
customer support, but also actually
maintains the entire hosting infrastructure
for its clients. The company also not only
provides support for different control
panels such as Ensim, Plesk and Hsphere, but
also provides installation of the software,
in-depth training for internal hosting
company staff and also provides migration of
plain vanilla servers to specialized hosting
environments.
"We have not just positioned ourselves as a
one-stop shop for UNIX administration and
client support, but as a training company,"
Koop says.
Other features that both customer support
firms offer customers include toll-free
telephone support and 24-hour e-mail support
inquiries. These methods of support
inquiries are the most commonplace in the
Web hosting industry. These technical
support providers also provide highly
personalized service, keeping detailed call
histories on the nature and frequency of
support inquiries.
Smaller hosting firms should explore these
services in order to lower their costs and
increase revenues, especially if providing
shared hosting services. |
