Do youк hosts offer you any kind of response time guarantee? Do you consider this fact while choosing a hosting provider?
I found on marblehost.com site that they offer 25 minutes response time guarantee , this sounds pretty alluring, any tricks about it?

t is always good to have a response time guarantee. But You cannot really believe what they have on their website. So the best way will be to check their reviews and see what their customers are telling. Response times less than 1 hour is always good and there are many hots offering good response times.

Thanx, Matt, but if the time is clearly stated on the site, doesn't it imply it should be more or less fixed? Though I understand that to respond and to resove the issue mifght be two different things.

Our company offers 1 hour or less response in emergency situations and 2 hours or less in just core maintenance type and if clients feel like to have a little chat, then under 6 hours.




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Actually, the response time guarantee is 1 hour, based on an average response time of 25 minutes.

Buuut...response time and time taken to solve the problems are two different things. A response could mean "yeah, we put it in our trouble ticket system and we'll look at it at about a quarter past when I'm done watching this hot porn I just downloaded" or it could mean that the response contains the answer. It also partly depends on the issue; some issues take longer than others to resolve e.g. switching over my mail server program. The new one got installed, but then someone had to transfer the data and emails from the old mail program to the new one. Not exactly a 2-minute issue.

In other words, the guarantee is somewhat meaningless, although it is nice.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Actually, the response time guarantee is 1 hour, based on an average response time of 25 minutes.
In other words, the guarantee is somewhat meaningless, although it is nice.

When I said 1 or 2 hours, I sould mention that, our technitions will report back to client that the issue was solved and if problem is real serious and simple turn on something is not an issue and because as you said they must first to find the reason and that may take lots of time to go over logs and find what happened in the first place and then fix the problem, it may take longer than just 1 hour.


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That's cool dude. I guess I should have clarified more, though. The guarantee I was referring to was that of the OP's potential host (MarbleHost).

heh,

As a rule of thumb Jeyce, any good provider will get back to you within the time frame the receipients here have mentioned. Some of the "larger" hosts may even take longer due to possibly being understaffed.

A response time of less than 1 hour is always a standard one and there are a lot who offer that. May will have an average value for the response time so that you may get a response in less than 10 minutes or slightly more than an hour, and it will average to 20 or 30 minutes.
But the resolution time will be different, you will probably have this value around 4 or 5 hours.

A quick response is always good as that will make you feel that they are aware of the issue and are still working on that.

I don't see any problems to get back to client in 10 minutes or less. For that to happen all you have to do is to setup your mail program to reply with automated message, something like: We got your request and we will contact you shortly with full report.

But these kinds of aproch will looks like there is no real people are working to help them out thus it will looks like company is run by machines.

Beside, if clients have to tell company that there is some problems, then reply in 10 minutes or 10 hours won’t help because good WHC will have system in place that will alert SysAdmin about problems and Technicians start working to solve them even before clients discover that there is something wrong


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Every provider knows their load on the support. And hire stuff. Once the number of tickets brcomes 10 - 20 times bigger then you used to have the response time can increased.

A good great response time is 10 to 15 minutes on support tickets. Therea are many customers who prefer to be served on the phone or to chat with customer support. So in most cases you get support in real time.. without any delay.

Sure you can talk on the phone to somebody in India and who has no access to server logs and can't trace the source of the problem and fix it. And because his job is to read from "What to say to clients when they call for help" manual and to open ticket, he will later send to real technitions, I don't care to have this kind of 10 minutes or less service.

Now, company with 10,000 clients will have at least 100 callers at any given time. If phone support tech talk to client and fix the problem within 10 minutes then he can serve only 6 clients per hour and to serve the rest that company must have at least 15 "technicians" or more. Even if you pay them $3.00/hour (in Indian money) it still cost $45.00/hour or $1.180/day or about $34,000/mo. and if WHC charge only $6.00/mo. for services then more than half of their clients pay phone support alone.

Of corse there is real technicians and SysAdmins who get paid $20.00/hour, and you need at least 5 of them to conduct proper service, will cost you twice more than you collect from your clients and with this kind of expence your phone service will take you out off the business in no time


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You mean the training binders don't work in all cases, fastreplies? Well I'm shocked by this revelation.

Imagine how shocked phone "tech" support guy when he can't find the answer to some problem.






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take care when hostings companies promises short time responses. Ask another users of that hosting first, y you can.

why you dont email them with some question and see how long it takes to receive an answer?

Ask another users of that hosting first, y you can.

Good point.
Honest WHC will post reviews with websites and owners email addresses whom you can contact with questions about that hosting company.

why you dont email them with some question and see how long it takes to receive an answer?

Apples and Oranges.
We have Help Desk with about 30 emails per hour capacity to deal with "chat" questions
and support dept. technicians who will reply only to the problems at hands.


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Originally Posted by hcolor

A good great response time is 10 to 15 minutes on support tickets. Therea are many customers who prefer to be served on the phone or to chat with customer support. So in most cases you get support in real time.. without any delay.

True but only in some cases. I handle sales support via phone. No problem. However our Support department sometimes needs to look into server issues so they dont have phone support. However they do offer live chat for base (level 1 issues)

Originally Posted by fastreplies

Sure you can talk on the phone to somebody in India and who has no access to server logs and can't trace the source of the problem and fix it. And because his job is to read from "What to say to clients when they call for help" manual and to open ticket, he will later send to real technitions, I don't care to have this kind of 10 minutes or less service.
fastreplies

I presume you are exaggerating a little bit, or are things really like this in the hosting industry?


To GR-Andy, though phone may really work without delay, not everything can be done via phone and in most cases it's not convenient at all when you have to send some info it should be better done via help desk. Still phone is a wonderful way to handle sales and pre-sales questions.

As for Marblehost.com response time guarantee and the general quality of their services, there asome reviews of them, I hope it'll help
http://www.webhostingtoplist.com/mar...st-reviews.php
http://www.vistainter.com/reviews/M/marblehost.com/