LIFE is a Partnership - Technical Support

How many team members does it take to…? How would you complete this sentence? Recently, I was surprised how I finished this thought.

I added a new creative partnership to my portfolio. It entails working with website and graphic programs publishing and designing. The business that I newly represent had given me all the information to connect to their website. I was ready to begin making the changes. I only had to connect to the website to download the site files. I predicted that it would only take the usual few minutes.

To my amazement, I was wrong. For 3 days, I tried everything to connect to the website but to no avail. I changed from being passive FTP to not being passive. I re-entered the password. I tried 3 other FTP programs. I called some of my colleagues to ask for some ideas and tried them. I went to Google to troubleshoot the connection as well as to Dreamweaver. I tried everything that the search results asked me to do. But nothing seemed to work.

Finally, after exhausting every other possibility, I decided to give my technical support a call just in case my local internet connection settings were not right for the work that I was trying to do. I figured that I had nothing to lose.

During the phone call, I explained my situation - that there did not seem to be anything wrong with the remote information I was entering for the website but that I was just not able to connect. After looking into the difficulty, they called me back to let me know that indeed my settings needed to be reconfigured so that I had a static IP address. Right on the spot, we went into the settings on my router and it immediately worked just fine.

So to complete the sentence…How many team members does it take to design and edit a website? At least 3. It not only takes the designer and a business owner to provide the website work for the designer, it takes a reliable and supportive internet connection provider.

Biography of Wanda Reinholdt

Wanda is a forward-thinking pioneer in the arts and in business, desiring to bring them together in effective self-sustaining partnerships.

For the past 6 years, Wanda has directed numerous semi-professional and community theatre productions. She also founded Reinholdt Productions, a theatrical production company specializing in the systemic design of projects. By using her experience, along with her BA’s in theatre and music, she brings to her company a combination of directing, teaching, writing, and problem solving skills. Wanda’s abilities are best used in a community where partnerships of theatre and music are formed, particularly through producing and directing.

In addition, Wanda has developed her skills in business partnerships in the form of administrative and strategic relationships, mentoring opportunities and leadership and personal development coaching. These skills act as a magnet attracting resources that enable her clients to contribute with strength to their world.

Helpdesk Performance Metrics

As more and more business are making use of helpdesks to interact with customers, both in terms of orders and customer complaints or technical questions, it is apparent that such call centers should have standardized measurements to use in determining level of performance for both the individual customer representative and the entire facility. Some of the common performance measurements which are used to track helpdesk performance are listed below.

Wait time in the queue - This is usually stated in minutes on the average, that the caller is likely to experience in the wait line. Some helpdesk software will inform the caller with statements such as 'the estimated wait time is XX minutes' The caller can then determine whether or not he wants to wait for a helpdesk professional to come on the line.

Average Talk Time - This is the amount of time that the helpdesk professional and the caller spend on the line in conversation. Call center employees are often urged to cut the average talk time to some arbitrary figure. Employees may be disciplined at some level if they are not completing their calls within a specified length of time.

Average Handling Time - The average handling or dealing dime is the talk time plus any wrap-up or hold time.

Service Level - Service level or service level percentage is the percentage of calls answered within a specific time frame. Software often is programmed to see that one particular person doesn't end up taking the majority of the calls while other helpdesk personnel are clocking lower numbers.

Calls per hour - The number of calls or inquiries per hour is agent specific. Again, these are often used as quotas which agent personnel are held to.

After Call Work - Also known as Not Ready Time/NR or sometimes Wrap-Up time, this is the amount of time utilized during which the call center agent processes a customer requests but are not speaking to the customer.

First Call Resolution - This is a measurement of customer satisfaction. It's determined by measuring the number of calls where the customer doesn't call back with the same problem after a certain period.

Total Calls Abandoned - This is sometimes displayed as the percentage of calls abandoned. It usually occurs when a call center is experiencing a high call volume so that there are unduly long hold times and the customer gives up on the call.

Idle time - This is the amount or percentage of time spent by an agent when they are not ready to take the next call. These percentages are usually monitored closely by call center administration.

Each call center will have staff assigned to be part of the quality assurance team. They will look at factors such as First Call Resolution to determine if the customers are being served properly, but they QA team may also listen in on random phone calls, during which the customer representative is being rated on how well the established guidelines are being met.

If you are interested in helpdesk metrics and other ways of measuring helpdesk performance, check Sam Miller new web-site.

The Importance Of Customer Support In Hosting

 

So why is customer support all that important in a hosting service? Simple! Imagine your self working hard on a site and you finally get a quite popular one with an impressive amount of daily visitors. Let's say it's a very popular forum. And all of a sudden system gets crash. So you have to come up with silly reasons to tell to the visitors, why is the site down and why can't they access their accounts. Most importantly you don't know if it's permanent or is it just some temporary down time. And believe me, by the experience that I have, when that happens you are in quite a pickle. All of that can be avoided if you have customer service. They will tell you what is wrong, when will the server be up again etc.

So how do I find a hosting service with customer service?

Well just search the web for a bit. Now a day almost every hosting website has that already in the cheapest hosting package. After all you wouldn't want to be stranded all alone in a situation like that. Because of such technological advancement and lots of researches, there are many sites and companies, which promise you everything. The customer service can even serve you like a critic. If the company doesn't provide it to all of the packages, than that means it's not a too good company, now is it? How can they host servers for people and sites if they can't even manage some customer service and support?

Usually sites with a lot of money and a big capital have such things installed because the consulting staff is not cheap at all, as a result to that we can conclude that companies with customer support care about their clients. The consulting staff is paid like normal workers, even more if they have good knowledge and that's how you know that you won't be left down. So what does it cost you to search the web for a new and better service with some consulting involved in it, having help when you need it and finding a good hosting company just for you?

But don't be fooled. All customer services aren't all that good. A quick response and resolution time of the crew is a must when talking about quality. When you talk to the staff they have to make you feel good, and can communicate fast, clear and without complications.

Still don't understand the benefits of the whole thing?

Think of it in this way. The Customer service is actually like a hand that guides you, so you can't actually make mistakes. The only mistake that you can do is at the very beginning. That is choosing a wrong hosting service or a free package, that doesn't include the support. So just don't be lazy and search for a better company, a company with pizzazz, a company WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE that won't let you down.

Abdul Vasi is a Marketing Expert specialized in Internet Marketing, His Bangalore Windows Hosting Company Web Hosting Bangalore provides you with reliable but affordable web hosting solution for your online business