how reliable is your support, because..

Deezine · 3rd July 2008, 08:36 AM

I tried calling your office this morning at approx 9.15 to ask a few questions, but only got a recorded message saying leave a message...
Also, your live chat' feature showed 'on' but was actually off!

We have about 40 domains currently on an account with Hostgator, but I want to move to UK based server location for SEO benefits. [otherwise happy with Hostgator] but prompt support is something we simply must have.

Your comments?

regards
D.

UH-Simon · 3rd July 2008, 08:44 AM

You can either leave a message on the telephone and we'll return your call asap or we have sales staff working 24/7 on our helpdesk and live chat service. I have just verified that live chat is operational at the moment so I am not sure why you had a problem using that. Give our helpdesk a try and I am sure you'll be impresses with the speed of response.. night or day.

L Plates · 3rd July 2008, 08:45 AM

Support is excellent althought this is mainly by support ticket. PLUS support is 24/7 and in my experience most issues dealt with within the hour.

Deezine · 3rd July 2008, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Simon

You can either leave a message on the telephone and we'll return your call asap or we have sales staff working 24/7 on our helpdesk and live chat service. I have just verified that live chat is operational at the moment so I am not sure why you had a problem using that. Give our helpdesk a try and I am sure you'll be impresses with the speed of response.. night or day.

OK...I tried live chat twice at approx 9.15, as I said and it definitely wasnt up then.

But hey, I'm not trying to negative...I'm just concerned about support issues because when a client has an issue with their site we need to know we can get things sorted out as quickly as possible.

Are there different levels of support?

We are thinking of taking your 'Professional' reseller package.

Also, if there was an unexpected spike in bandwidth usage would you notify us of the issue before attempting to take a site down?

Thanks again..
D.

UH-Matt · 3rd July 2008, 09:09 AM

We do not take sites down when they exceed bandwidth, we contact you to discuss options such as an upgrade or reducing/optimising the sites usage.

I would recommend you try sending us some emails at random times for a true test of our support- you will find you gain a response within minutes at anytime of day or night.

Our phone is for pre-sales only and does take second precidence over existing client support. Our phone sales line is often busy, but our helpdesk is always well manned 24x7.

Thank you,

Simon · 3rd July 2008, 09:42 AM

3 years experience with UH and all manner of packages from them, our first which was the most basic single site package they had, all the way through reseller and dedicated server, I can tell you with confidence that it doesn't matter how much your paying UH you always get the same great level of service.

Its not uncommon for my support queries to be logged at weird times of the day and there is always someone there to respond, I'm sure you'll be very happy with UH!

Good luck

Simon

silver · 3rd July 2008, 10:39 AM

I would agree with Matt here. It's certainly a good test and I am sure you will not be disappointed. I did the same thing and was very impressed by the quick response and feedback.

No regrets from here

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Matt

I would recommend you try sending us some emails at random times for a true test of our support- you will find you gain a response within minutes at anytime of day or night.
...
Thank you,

Terra · 3rd July 2008, 10:51 AM

Helpdesk is the way to go - I know phoning is nice, but it's actually terribly inefficient to handle support queries. A quick email with all the necessary details gets the job done swiftly.

pjrobertson · 3rd July 2008, 05:22 PM

UH support is excellent

I usually get a reply to a support ticket within 5 minutes, and the live chat service is always useful (although I have also found that it's 'unavailable' when the sign is showing 'on')

From my experience, UH is extremely flexible when it comes to things like bandwidth / storage and it's really easy to sort out a custom - package if things aren't quite what you expect.

(As I've already mentioned), I've recommended UH to a friend when Dreamhost just shut down his account without any warnings. They're not giving us any of the data back either

Enjoy UH!

Alex. · 3rd July 2008, 10:43 PM

Recently the live chat support has been down when I've tried to contact support. That said, once I've placed a ticket it is always replied to / solved very very quickly.

In a way it's actually better to use the support desk, as I find it very useful to have a local log in my inbox as to what was said when etc.

Anyway, apart from that support here is great

UH-Simon · 3rd July 2008, 11:29 PM

We always recommend you use the helpdesk as your first point of contact for support as this is being actively worked 24/7 by our technical staff. Live chat is available mostly during UK business hours unless helpdesk tickets are busier than usual and then it may be unavailable to enable our staff to focus 100% on resolving the helpdesk tickets. Any account specific technical issues can only be dealt with via the helpdesk for security reasons. We have found this is the best way for our customers.

Vger · 4th July 2008, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Are there different levels of support?

Yes, there are 4 levels:

1. Good.
2. Very good.
3. Excellent.
4. Above and beyond the call of duty.

Vger

pjrobertson · 4th July 2008, 07:06 AM

It took UH 8 minutes to sort out my ticket yesterday!
Amazing.

Talking of the live chat feature- is there any way you could make it more obvious if the system is on / off?

clyde · 4th July 2008, 07:16 AM

Ok so there's been lots of response to this post, but I need to chuck in my own.
I've been with UH for at least 3 years now. I almost always use the ticket support method, and ALWAYS get a very fast response. Once I got a response before the auto reply to my ticket came through - can't get any faster than that.
Also, most importantly, the quality of support is very high. You don't get fobbed off. The technical competence of the support staff cannot be questioned. And you have this forum to help your own understanding and make contributions.
Deezine, don't hesitate, just move to UH.

UH-Matt · 4th July 2008, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Talking of the live chat feature- is there any way you could make it more obvious if the system is on / off?

It is not required because our team are on the livechat 24x7, but if they are already on a chat or busy it will forward you to a contact form. It is extremely busy due to primarily being a sales tool for pre-sales questions. If our guys are busy dealing with a complex ticket or already on a call then they would not turn there attention to a new call.

Franck · 4th July 2008, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Matt

It is not required because our team are on the livechat 24x7, but if they are already on a chat or busy it will forward you to a contact form. It is extremely busy due to primarily being a sales tool for pre-sales questions. If our guys are busy dealing with a complex ticket or already on a call then they would not turn there attention to a new call.

I don't think that there is any question about those priorities. The question is whether the "Sales and support staff are online now" green thing on the front page could be made a more reliable indicator of the actual availability of someone to chat to. I was a little worried before I signed up when on a couple of occasions I clicked the green "ONLINE" now and got the "busy or unavailable" message. I would have been happier if I had not been "promised" an immediate chatting opportunity. If it is technically difficult to make the front page accurate (or to set up a queuing system?) then perhaps you should just change the wording to something weaker and not misleading -- "may be available now" or some such.

As far as I can tell, one of your main selling points is that you do not promise more than what you can deliver, be it in bandwith or support. And you live up to that in most areas. It seems unfortunate that a green "ONLINE" thing on the front page undermines it.

canuckster · 5th July 2008, 04:10 PM

Just to add yet another recommendation, I've been with UH for over 3 years and in the beginning was disappointed they didn't have phone support ... but a few support tickets later I no longer cared, as their ticket-response times had just blown me away (not to mention their actual level of dedication to getting my problem solved). 3 times I've submitted an Urgent ticket, and each time was answered in less than 10 minutes (one of those times, the reply came just one minute after I'd submitted!).

Now -- to UH I would just like to say I agree that if any way can be found to make your live-chat indicators more accurate, that would only be a good thing; you probably do lose at least a small amount of business by pre-sales people assuming either that your tool isn't built very well (says online when not, ergo they don't know what they're doing) or else that you're all about gimmicks without the underlying support. Perhaps instead of just Online or Offline, a third indicator (Standby? maybe with a yellow light) could be added to indicate 'chat is online, but all staff are busy, click here to join the queue".

Just a thought.

But Deezine, I can't say enough good about UH.

sapphal · 7th July 2008, 09:46 AM

My twopenneth

UH have simply the best support. Amazingly quick support ticket response, no standard replies, all you have to do is ask and it gets sorted.

Unbelievable