Customer support is one of the most important considerations when choosing your web hosting. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced webmaster, you will need some assistance at some point. While all web hosting companies provide phone and email support, most now also offer live chat support available around the clock.
Live chat support can be extremely helpful and productive for those of us that don’t want to be glued to the phone or waiting around for an email response. The better website hosts will provide live chat support 24 hours a day. And, while you may have to wait for a response whilst your tech support person researches an answer, you can easily and convenient flip over and multitask at your computer until you get a resolution to the problem (usually at most a few minutes).
Generally, the higher rated web hosting companies provide great support and this includes their live chat departments. That’s not to say that occasionally you may get a dud. While I’m sure the top website hosts try their best to screen out bad employees, once in a while you may encounter an unhelpful and or unfriendly support person. Fortunately, there are remedies for these instances.
If you have an unpleasant experience or get an unsatisfactory response, the easiest thing to do is simply end the chat session (keep a copy of the conversation) and log back on to hopefully get a different tech support person. The larger companies have many support techs online so chances are you’ll get somebody else. This situation happened to me recently. I used the live chat option to find out about an issue with our web server stats at one of the highly rated web hosting companies on our list. We’ve always been highly satisfied with their support, but on this day the tech I encountered was not only unhelpful but kind of rude and abrupt. After his first response to my inquiry, I asked for some clarification. Still not satisfied with his response, I said I still did not understand and asked some follow up questions. He abruptly replied that there was “Nothing to Understand” and reiterated his previous response. Well, I immediately let him know he was not very helpful, ended that chat session, and proceeded to give him the lowest rating possible.
That’s another important point to remember. Web hosting companies rely on customer feedback to properly reward and discipline their employees. Always be sure to provide your feedback and comments (whether good or bad) after your live chat session. By the way, as a follow up to the above story, I promptly logged back in to the live chat support and was connected to another support person who was much more helpful and friendly. This person received very high survey marks from me!
One more point to remember about live chat support. You should have the option to save, email, and or print out the complete conversation transcript between you and the support tech person. This is a very good idea as you can refer back to it should you need to follow up again in the future or if the tech provides additional information you can use to solve a similar issue you may encounter at a later time.
Live chat is a great option for resolving your website hosting issues. Always make sure your hosting provider offers it. And keep the above tips in mind to keep your site up and running smoothly.
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