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Glenn Murray wrote on September 17th, 2013

For those asking, here's the run-in that led to this survey... I had some niggling problems with my host. Wrong permissions sets on folders so I couldn't upload images. Disk quota errors when I shouldn't have been anywhere near my limit. That sort of thing. Problem was, every time I contacted support, they told me it was fixed, and it SEEMED fixed for a while, but then it'd come back. I kept telling them it wasn't fixed, and that they needed to fix it PROPERLY, and they kept telling me they had, but clearly they hadn't. I put this down mostly to the fact that their email support is outsourced to India. Every email I received - even WITHIN A THREAD, with replies just minutes after the last - was from someone different. There was no continuity and no CONNECTION with me, and clearly the tech support people had no ownership of the problem, and no real care whether it was resolved. Eventually, I sent an email to their feedback email address, telling them they had 'til noon to get a senior AUSTRALIAN tech support person on the phone with me, or I was going to someone else. (I've been with this host since 2006, and I pay $300/yr!) Not long after, I got a call from their customer service manager. She was very apologetic, and took responsibility for the situation. "We definitely dropped the ball." She also said she had forwarded the issue to one of their senior support guys, and he'd resolved it properly. (Incidentally, this guy is one of the first support guys I ever dealt with at this company, and one of the reasons I've stayed so long with them. He's awesome!) But I said that wasn't enough. They need to rethink their offshore tech support approach... Me: "It's common knowledge that when you offshore this sort of stuff, you get a sub-standard quality of work. I know that, and you know it. So in accepting that sub-standard quality, you're showing you don't care about your customers. I'm not the only one who thinks this. Everyone I know thinks the same: If you offshore support, you don't care about your customers. Full-stop." My host's customer service manager disagreed, and said they can't offer Australian based support without increasing prices, and most customers aren't prepared to pay more for it. I took issue with this because I'm ALREADY paying more for their hosting than I could pay elsewhere, and I pay that extra because their support is (or used to be) great! In the first few years that I was with them, their support WAS in Australia. Me: "If you could afford Australian based support back then, why can't you afford it now? You're bigger and have more revenue. Economies of scale and all that..." She said they can't afford to because operating costs keep going up. Obviously this is true, but I reckon it's still a smokescreen. In any event, I told her I was going to conduct a survey to show her I'm not the only one who thinks offshore support shows they don't care. That's why I'd love you to fill it out. :-)

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Steve Manning wrote on September 18th, 2013

Thanks for taking up the fight Glenn! All people want is great service where you feel like a valued customer.

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Glenn Murray wrote on September 18th, 2013

Exactly!

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Glenn Murray wrote on September 23rd, 2013

Unfortunately, this survey didn't get enough responses. So when I presented it to my host's customer service manager, she simply dismissed it. :-(

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Andy from Get A Copywriter wrote on October 2nd, 2013

You got us all curious now, Glenn. What do people say? How many responses did you get?

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Glenn Murray wrote on October 2nd, 2013

Hi Andy. Thanks for commenting. Unfortunately I didn't get as many responses as I'd have liked. You can see a summary of responses to date here: https://www.divinewrite.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Survey-Results.png

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Offshore tech-support – Your thoughts? | AWD CopywritingBlog wrote on October 22nd, 2013

[…] Offshore tech-support – Your thoughts? […]

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