Best of the ISP-Lists

[May 18, 1999]

In a thread on ISP-Marketing, April 12, 1999, web-hosting provider Doug Stinson asks:

"How do you deal with clients that call you up for tech support every day?
   I have a guy who calls me 2 or 3 times a day asking various technical questions relating to his web sites, it's driving me nuts. He can't get this or that to work and says we don't have something set up right, even though we do. I constantly have to walk him through correcting the problem on his end.
   I obviously don't want to upset the guy since he's a paying customer, but he's taking up far more time than he is worth. Any suggestions?"

The consensus of the thread was that above all, you need to be clear about the fact that under the circumstances you describe, this customer is a liability, not an asset. Two possible approaches for resolving this dilemma emerged from the discussion:

•  Set Limits
•  Provide Up-Front Support

Set a reasonable, policy-based limit (for example, "We're only responsible for server-side problems") and enforce it.

You'll need to clearly state the limit at the outset of the support call and then, if the customer oversteps the boundary, make that known, while offering an alternative way to deal with the problem.

• Offer to provide extended support, webmastering services, or whatever,  for a fee.
• Make the fee substantial enough to cover your costs and to make an impact on your customer's impulses to pick up the phone. If you want to be nice, offer to break the fee into half hour increments.
• Do not fail to render a bill or credit card charge for these services. Make sure s/he is on a valid credit card.
• Respectfully and tactfully refer the customer to another support resource—perhaps a consultant with whom you have an ongoing relationship—or to good books or other training materials.
• Refer the customer to another, more willing, hosting provider. If s/he is a newbie, this might be AOL or a similar organization that's set up to deal with the inexperienced. Encourage them to return when they're ready for better, faster service, and offer to waive their startup fee.
• Respectfully and tactfully refer the customer to another support resource—perhaps a consultant with whom you have an ongoing relationship—or to good books or other training materials.
• Refer the customer to another, more willing, hosting provider. If s/he is a newbie, this might be AOL or a similar organization that's set up to deal with the inexperienced. Encourage them to return when they're ready for better, faster service, and offer to waive their startup fee.

Solution 2: Provide Up-Front Support

Some ISP professionals believe that—certainly for inexperienced customers—it will always take more people, time, and money to have them get themselves up and running and support them by phone than to do it yourself.

Their solution is to offer customers an optional service of hooking up and configuring their equipment, making sure everything is working, and training them to maintain and manage the site in the future.

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