Technical Support
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Technical support is one of the things that distinguishes a premium hosting
provider from a cheap one.
A premium hosting provider will respond to your issues almost immediately and
ensure all issues are followed up and resolved as quickly as possible. If an
issue can't be resolved it is escalated until it can be. If it's related to an
incident, an incident report may be sent to the customer within 24 hours. A job
will only be closed once the customer approves.
A cheap hosting provider may wait a day or so before responding. And even
then, it might be simply to seek further information about your issue. They
might eventually resolve the issue but probably won't ask you if it's OK to
close the job - they'll just close it.
A bad hosting provider might not even respond.
Of course, this is a generalization. Some cheap hosting companies are very
quick at responding. But you need to be aware that, the less you pay, the
greater the likelihood that the quality of the technical support will be lower.
Your technical support requirements will largely depend on how complex your
website is. If you have a small, static website, you might only need to contact
your hosting provider once or twice per year. If you have a more complex site or
many sites, you may find yourself contacting your hosting provider on a weekly
or even daily basis. This is especially true if the website is constantly
changing with new "sub-sites" being added, or if you have multiple development
projects occuring simultaneously.
Online Ticket Systems
Your hosting provider might offer multiple methods of contact. For example,
they might offer phone support, live chat, email, or an online ticket system.
Many hosting providers require that all support requests are logged with the
online ticket system. Doing this ensures that there is no confusion over what
was actually requested, and what the response was. This can be particularly
useful on long running requests, or if you need to refer to another support
request. A ticket system can also be a great knowledgebase. This can be useful
for both parties.
|
