In today’s digital era where an online presence is a must have for a successful business, newbies as well as established corporates are ready to make huge investments so as to have an attractive, reliable and secure web interface which could attract prospective customers and help them earn more revenue. A web hosting provider will be an integral part of this IT ecosystem, who are responsible for hosting the website as well as ensuring that it stays up all the time.
But what to do in case your site becomes down? It is unfortunate, but at times the site goes down due to a number of reasons. The only thing you can do is to contact your hosting provider, who will first analyze the issue faced by you, think of possible reasons, troubleshoot the hosted site and bring back the site online.
The most common ways to contact the hosting provider is either by phone or through online chat facility. Both of them are quite effective ways to raise your concerns regarding the issue with the site to the technical staff who are responsible to troubleshoot the issue. Let us analyze the pros and cons of both these channels of communication between the client and the hosting provider:
Phone Support
Phone-based technical support has been the oldest means to provide technical assistance. You dial the helpline number, a tech will attend your call, you provide details of the issue and required details, he puts you on hold and try to troubleshoot the issue, gives you a quick update regarding the status of issue along with how long it make take to rectify the issue, assures you that your case will be dealt with required priority and ends the call.
The advantage of phone-based support is that you feel assured that your issue will be solved soon. You have the provision to get a status update regarding the issue with just a phone call. Many survey reports reveal that majority of people prefer a more personalized communication medium such as phone support.
Phone support, even though being most preferred communication medium comes with considerable limitations. The client can only verbally explain the issue, but cannot send a graphical representation, such as a snapshot of the error faced. This will have an impact on the resolution time as it takes longer for the tech to understand the issue. Also, they will have difficulty in explaining how errors that have occurred at the client end has led to the failure of the server.
Live Chat
The evolution of new generation information technology has opened up a new platform where the client can reach out for technical assistance through a non-voice medium, along with a graphical communication platform called online chat or live chat. Here the client informs his issue to the tech through text message, who looks into the issue with the details provided to them via chat. It provides both the client and tech a better environment where the former can convey the issue along with screenshots or a video of the error faced whereas the latter has the advantage of understanding the issue and provide a solution with minimum resolution time. Also, the language and accent issues do not make an obstacle between the client and the tech.
Live chat is arguably the best platform for technical assistance when compared to phone support but at times the clients may feel frustrated when the tech repeatedly provide the canned response, when they cannot convey their urgency to the tech concerned to the full extent or when response to the queries come very late or not at all. The client always expects a quick resolution of the issue but in the above-stated situations will bring a feeling that the chat queries are answered just mechanically without any personal touch. This proves to be a major drawback for the live chat support.
To sum up, the advantages of both these methods have a crucial place in providing technical assistance. The natural instinct for a personalized touch which phone support provides makes it an attractive option for the client. The perspective of the tech who is responsible for providing technical assistance will be Livechat because of the ease it provides to him. So, the optimal choice will be a combination of these, where the positives aspects of both communication media are combined. The Live chat platform can be used for providing details of the issue whereas the phone support can be made beneficial for further follow up if required.
Clients must be proactive in identifying the best web hosting company for their IT needs and look out for those who have proven track records of providing excellent technical assistance and a really strong client base.
