Your site is down. You realize that you need to contact support and you visit your host’s contact page. There, you are faced with a decision: Do you reach for the telephone and give them a call? Or do you send them an email/file a trouble ticket?

Most people find talking to a human being very reassuring in these moments and will reach for their phone (or their Skype headset). In fact, phone support is one of the most commonly-requested features for a Web host for this very reason. However, if you want to actually solve the problem, going with a phone call is not always the best solution. In fact, it usually isn’t.

Though phone support can be great, one has to know when and how to use it. Unfortunately, too few do and end up passing up an opportunity to quickly resolve the problem in exchange for the comfort of talking to another person.

So when should you turn to your keyboard your dialpad? The answer is not exactly clear-cut.

Why I Prefer Email

Though there are times where both are appropriate, when given the choice, by default, I prefer email or trouble ticket. There are three very good reasons for this:

1. Paper Trail: If you file via email or ticket, everything is recorded and written down including the time of the request and what was said/done by all parties. This helps both you and the host out in the event anything goes wrong.
2. Easier to Explain Problems: Getting a strange error message you need to talk about? Good luck explaining it over the phone. However, with a written method of contact you can just paste it in easily.
3. Trouble Tickets Go To People Who Fix Problems: The odds of your support request reaching an actual technician go up drastically over email. Hosting companies rarely have technicians answer the phone directly and instead have customer service reps answer the lines, who are trained to answer only basic questions and pass along more complex ones to technicians, which is the same thing a trouble ticket does anyway.

Many phone calls to hosting companies result in the filing of a trouble ticket that is treated the same as if the customer had filed it themselves. Going through the phone line only adds an extra layer of complexity to the problem, slowing down you getting the help you need and increasing the likelihood that there will be confusion along the way.

Most of the time, it is simply more efficient to go straight through the email or trouble ticket system: it is that simple.

Exceptions to the Email over Phone Rule

Of course none of this is to say that the people who answer the phones at your host are not technically adept and able to help you, just that they usually are not the ones with their fingers on the servers fixing problems, unless they are at a very small host.

Depending on your host, you can get some great help over the phone and if your problem is one better discussed over the phone, it can still be a compelling option.

For example, if you need to be walked through something, especially something common like setting up an FTP client or installing a database, phone support can be a huge help. Any time you are wanting to do something yourself and need instruction, phone support is probably a good place to start.

Likewise, if you have an outage, are already aware that they are working on it, but need an estimated time for a fix, a phone support technician can be a huge help, having that information on hand at all times.

In short, if you aren’t looking for someone at your host to fix the problem themselves, calling phone support can be a great way to get an issue resolved. However, if you need the help of a server tech, in most cases, all the phone support rep can do is file a trouble ticket, the same as what you can do from the site.

In short, it is a tool that needs to be used wisely and only when appropriate.

Bottom Line

Is phone support a worthless feature to get from a host? Absolutely not. It is always nice to have it and it can certainly be handy, especially for a relative beginner. However, that doesn’t make it a necessity or something you should base your hosting purchase on. My host, Servint, doesn’t offer phone support and I’ve never missed it.

Furthermore, phone support is a fairly expensive feature for hosts to offer as they require at least several full-time employees to manage; employees that are usually not actively fixing issues on your server.

If a host is offering it and it is a good deal, then I would say view it as a bonus. But if your host doesn’t, don’t worry too much. What matters the most is how quickly and adeptly your host responds to support issues, not how you send it in.

You would much rather have a host only accept email or trouble ticket notices and respond quickly than a host that simply ignores phone calls. Though talking to a human can be comforting, it’s useless in the big picture and support should be all about getting things done, not what feels good.

(Thanks to michaelaw for the image)

Tags:   customer care • email support • host support • Hosting • phone support • trouble ticket