Support Issues [resolved]

[rmcsh1]

I've submitted this to the feedback email but I'm also posting it here because I feel the community should be able to respond. I know I'm not the only one having these issues.

Here is a copy of the email I sent to feedback@hostgator.com:

To whom it may concern:

I have been a customer with Host Gator for many many years now and have always been impressed with your service. Especially through the live chat system. It has been my experiences with the live chat techs that has made me confident enough in you to be at a point where I now have 2 managed dedicated servers and one separate reseller account with you.

Over the course of the last 6 months or so the quality of the help available via live chat has fallen dramatically. They no longer try to help at all. They simply refer you to submit a ticket which takes a long time to get a response to. This is not the level of service I've come to expect from HostGator and honestly the recent chat's I've had with the chat techs have left me so disappointed that I'm no longer able to recommend HostGator to friends and colleagues.

I would really like you to look into what has happened with the live chat system and do what it takes to bring that quality of service back. It's what sold me on HostGator years ago and what's kept me growing with you even though I'm capable of just renting the servers unmanaged elsewhere. On the flip side of that coin if this service doesn't improve it's also what will cause me to make the difficult choice to go elsewhere.

Thank you in advance for looking into this.

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I have to agree with a previous poster that the current system of throwing all tickets together is just silly. I'm a customer with not one but TWO managed dedi's and a reseller account. For the amount of money I spend with HostGator each month I think it's reasonable to expect a higher level of service.

I did submit a ticket on my current issue. It's ticket number LGT-13093394.

I had to submit the ticket myself because the chat tech never offered to submit it for me after I told him what my problem was. He also never offered to escalate.

I'm with the other customers who have posted here. I have been a very happy customer for a long time but the support levels are dropping so dramatically that it's scary. Support used to be HostGator's crown jewel. Without that level of support they become just another hosting company with a ton of competition out there.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HostGator - bring back the level of support that caused me to love you guys!

[rmcsh1]

Just as a follow up - as I neared the two hour mark with no response on a ticket that's preventing me from accessing my server I signed back into chat to ask for an escalation very politely. I explained that this was preventing me from accessing my server. 'Ricky Mo' first tells me:

Ricky Mo'You will need to await for a server admin to reach you via the ticket. As we have limited resources inside live chat. it should be responded to soon though as its already been in the queue for about two hours now.'

So I push back a little and say:

'OK - I'm trying not to turn into a jerk here but this is starting to become silly. I just finished reading in a thread that if I was a dedicated server customer (which I am times 2 plus a reseller account) and I wasn't getting a response that I should ask live chat to escalate the ticket. I'm politely asking you to escalate this as it's preventing me from accessing my server.
Two hours is long enough to wait on a response for an issue that is similar to something that the live chat technician was able to help me with 6 months or so ago.'

Suddenly Ricky decides to take a look at it!

Asks for my i.p. and root password. It takes him about 2 minutes to fix it. After waiting two hours. So - as best I can tell, if you're not a jerk, you'll get no service. THIS is why I'm so frustrated. If it was this easy a fix - they should have done it the first time I tried live chat.

[GatorPatrick]

It's upsetting to me to see that we did not handle your situation as our policy and our training dictate.

As I posted in the other thread regarding a similar situation you did exactly what I had explained to do, and while you did have your issue escalated the second time around you should not have had to push to get it done, also you should not have had to submit that ticket yourself.
Those are two things that we train every one of our technicians on and are written policies here at HostGator.

I'm using your incident as an example to the rest of our front line support staff as an area that we need to improve on. Like any other company, we can't bat 1.000 and this is one of those situations that we struck out on.

I would also like to continue this conversation with you via e-mail and I'll be sending you a message soon.

Thank you for your patience and thank you for providing us with an opportunity to improve.

[rmcsh1]

Patrick,

Thank you for your response to my concerns. You appear to be doing exactly what I hoped - looking into the situation and trying to use it as an example to further train your front line chat support techs.

Like I said, I really do love HostGator and just want to see the service levels return to what I'm used to.