A Customer "Support" Story
This week I had an issue with a web hosting company I use for my soccer team's website. They deleted my account, and I had no idea why. My only way to contact them was to click on the "support" link. My experience left me wishing that they would change the name of the link. It was far from "supportive."
As a paying customer, I expect to be able to reach the company if I have questions or to resolve an issue. Maybe it's because they're a web hosting company, or maybe they just don't care about the customer experience, but all I could do was fill out a web form and wait for a reply.
In their defense, I received a reply in less than an hour. But the issue was complicated and needed some explanation -- something I didn't want to do over email. I emailed them back and specifically asked for someone to call me and provided my phone number. Of course, I only got an email response that didn't fully resolve my issue.
It's now 4 days later and the issue still isn't resolved. I keep having to explain more details and discuss the intricacies of my situation over email. Had someone called me, as I specifically asked in my second email, or if I had been allowed to call someone, I'm sure this would've been resolved in a matter of minutes.
Instead, I keep waiting for email responses, and then I have to email back. If I lived on my computer all the time this might not be too bad, but it's a weekend and I want to get out in the sunshine, not stare at my inbox and pray for a message.
It's unfortunately another example of a company that is just not thinking of the customer experience and perspective. I'm sure they aren't intentionally avoiding me and I'm sure they want my continued business. But random emails for some Internet being named "Coal" just isn't doing it for me.
Seriously, does anyone think an email-only customer support system is a good idea?
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By no means as a defence of your (unkown) web hosting company, my experience has shown that such companies are usually one man bands who resell web hosting that has often already been resold to them. This holds truest when the price per month is small. One man bands have to deploy email only support schemes.
I have several websites for which I have bitten the bullet and rent a dedicated server in a random data centre somewhere in the USA. I can, should I choose, call the company, but their response is awesome via support ticket.
Previous experiences mirror yours. And, in at least two cases, get even worse! My most recent host offered be virtual dedicated hosting, and then proceeded to restrict the facilities I was accustomed to and made my sites die at random intervals.
When selecting a new web host may I suggest you visit the forums at webhostingtalk.com and search for your new host. Do dump the current one, they have their interests at heart, not yours.
Liz,
Email-only support is a terrible idea. Basically, this company is 'trapping' its customers and making resolution more difficult--and probably more costly for them in the long term because they have to repeatedly email you instead of resolving the issue quickly with one call.
If the site this company was hosting for you was an e-commerce site, they would have already cost you four days worth of business.