Does your hosting support overeat your business profit?
In an holistic approach, the hosting and server business have gone much competitive in support, technology and negotiable prices, so i think its high time to ask this question to atleast the mid to starter hosting ventures who would like to “save and invest” further for generating more revenues. Being competitive in prices in the hosting business depends on the cost effective selection of technology and its support, which let’s you offer reliable solution for nominal cost for your customers. As a starting point, many hosting companies and datacenters started to outsource their techincal/sales support to overseas, because the lower cost of labor made it possible to provide 24-hour phone/email support which otherwise will be impossible because of the overwhelming price they have to pay for maintaining the inhouse techs.
Selecting the best shore, which can deliver the entire range of support services to your business on shared basis/dedicated team basis will help you pursue bigger discounts and other buisness aspects. Also you will get a single point of contact for your business as well.
The following postions/departments are usually seen useful for many datacenter/server-vps resellers/hosting that could be outsourced to pursue higher profits.
1.sales team
2.Billing and customer service
3.Technical support level-1 &2
4.Technical support level 3
5.Spam and Abuse
1.The sales team:
Importance of a sales team can never be over-emphasised for any means of buisness. The experience and history of the sales team will determine the growth of any business. Outsourcing of the sales team is a big boon to hosting/server/vps business whose major market is the internet itself. This opens a wide oppurtunity for outsourcing this responsibility to accomplish your tough sales quotas with lesser investments. I prefer sales to be a teamwork to cover up 24hrs, whose combined commitments and results will accelerate your growth.
Few of the crucial responsibilities that should be pointed out while setting up sales team. The team should be capable of,
1. Generating new hosting opportunities through self generation, referrals, networking and company leads
2. Prospecting, presenting, and closing hosting solutions to mid/large customers.
3. Identifying clients needs and qualifying them for business opportunities
4. Should be highly trained Sales Engineering team to develop innovative solutions to meet customers needs
5. Meeting or exceeding sales quotas
6. Managing customers and prospects via customer management software/database.
7. Creating and Maintaing weekly and monthly sales report.
8. Develop and maintain strong, long-term relationships with the customers
2.Billing and Customer Service:
These are the guys working in front line positions who are in daily contact with various Customers on 24×7 basis. Their attitude and commitments are vital for the business growth. There’s no real secret to get your customers to come back. All you need to do is provide customer service that exceeds your customers’ expectations and outshines your competitors’ customer service. Afterall attaining superior customer statisfaction will be the primary goal of this team.
I wish to quote few responsibilities for the billing and customer service.
1. The team is required to provide excellent customer service support to the sales team for Order processing and monitoring.
2. Liaising with customers on billing enquiries and invoicing matters
3. Co-ordination with internal departments to ensure on-time delivery
4. Updating sales personnel of any backlog on a monthly basis
5. Creating and Maintaing weekly and monthly billing reports
6. Ensuring that financial policies are adhered to at all times
7. Other administrative duties as assigned
3.Technical Support level-1&2:
A good technical support team is an asset for Hosting industry as well. This industry demands continual support on 24×7x365 days with out fail. The technical capability, experience and precision of this team achieves the customer retention which ensures continual growth at any time. The frontline technical support team are the guys in team (can span from 4 to above) who need to address the customer queries faster (may be in 5minutes) with precise replies, may be a company holding a good range of knowledge base can easily achieve this, where the techs are easy to find the reply and customize it according to customer’s query. Beware: a canned reply may not help you to impress your customer.
Again, its time to pinpoint few responsibilities that may be helpful for you while selecting a support team.
1. Provide first phone/email support to the client, with immediate resolution of issues.
2. Deliver Good knowledge of products and services. (WHM/Cpanel,Plesk,Ensim,Direct Admin,LxLabs, Your products and Plans)
3. Essential Scripting will be an added advantage.
4. Liase with Engineers to resolve issues successfully.
5. Keep average 20-30 minutes Response Time.
6. Replies must be under Your Companie’s Brand.
7. Monitoring the IT infrastructure to keep it with out fail.
8. Escalating tickets to proper departments with sufficient notes.
4.Technical support level 3:
Here is where all the issues and technical queries should end and this can be set as either “On Call” or 2 dedicated techs, as many of support outsourcing companies set them aside for higher rates. These guys should work all in all from, server setups, implmenting security,user access policy and modelling backups and disaster recovery. So a set of backup should be ready for available at any point of time. These guys are highly skilled to work on hosting products (WHM/Cpanel,Plesk,Ensim,Direct Admin,LxLabs) and should have deep insight to formulate and implement AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) which limit resource usuage (max_memory, max_cpu, max db connections etc) according to plan, the customer purchased, have the ability to automate it using scripting and inform the customer if they are about to exceed it.
I think the following responsibilties should be essentially laid on tier 3 tech.
1. Fix the escalated tickets as per SLA (Service level Agreements)
2. Perform day-to-day System Administration and ensure integrity, security and availability of applications environments.
3. Ensure that the Projects and Database are successfully backed up as per the schedule.
4. Write scripts to analyze performance, health and security characteristics of servers. Patching and upgrading of new and existing environments.
5. Proactive monitoring to ensure servers, databases and applications environments are always available and running at optimal performance.
6. Server Performance Optimization
5.Spam And Abuse Department:
A team Inevitable for fighting against Spamming. Personally saying “I hate spams, Do You?” , “Offcourse Yes” . That should be your answer, if you are net savvy. So a hosting backbone with out proper spam fighting can lead to heavy client loss. The need for such a post will be multiplied when you hear “E-mail spam grew exponentially for several decades to several billion messages a day”
The position can be dedicated guy whose remuneration will be compensated when you think about maintaing higher customer retention and getting new businesses through their refferrals.
Never forget to clarify these responsibilities while selecting a tech for this position.
1. Should proactively monitor the mail traffic and devise mechanisms to implement number of emails per domain per hour as restricted in AUP.
2. Formulate and launch anti-spam analytics program, defining the process to perform daily log checks, review and report inbound spam trends.
3. Should implement solutions according to the severity of spamming, by checking the mail logs and implement RBLs, SPF, Greylisting, setting Domain Keys, maintain Whitelist and blacklist records.
4. Should take the responsibility for Report and submit 3rd party spam and abuses departments and formulate methods to recover such mail blocks in minimal downtime.