Improving Online Support Experience

[muzzle9]

Overall, I am quite pleased with HG's IM technical support (I use AIM). I have found such support rare in hosting companies.

However, there are rooms for improvement (as with everything):

* HG should consider adopting & enforcing company policy in which tech support staff identify themselves individually. a) it is simply professional, even the worst telecom support operators identify themselves b) it is much more personal than talking to "gatorsupport3" c) users can praise good techs and critique techs who can improve. A simple change, with many benefits.

* If a problem requires the tech to look information up, they should give such a response. Not silence until they come back with an answer (which can take up to 10 minutes), and not with the unprofessional response "wait a sec". Something more along the lines of, "Please expect to wait a few minutes while I look up information to resolve your issue." Also, when possible, if a tech is still looking up information (or resolving issues with other clients) after 5 minutes of giving the previous response, the tech should send a brief response updating the customer of this. Nothing is worse than sitting there wondering if the tech forgot about your problem/IM.

HG can provide their techs with a list of copy/paste "canned responses" for the above and similar situations, so that customers get a uniform support experience as well as allowing techs to save time from having to type the same phrases repeatedly.


Those are just a few suggestions I have. Again, overall, I have not dealt with a more pleasing host solution than HostGator. That's why I actually care to help you all improve an already great company.

I hope other users will feel free to add their suggestions as well.

[David]

Good suggestions, but might be kind of difficult to implement. I think their IM support is outsourced to another company (possibly offshore not sure) so there may be some barriers to getting suggestions like implemented. I would vote for them too though

David