The focus of today’s blog will be on the importance of your web host’s support structure, an often-overlooked factor in deciding which web host is right for you.

 Larger Support Teams

The Good: Webhosts with larger support departments often brag about their size, stating that their clients have dedicated teams of account managers, support technicians, and hardware techs. These dedicated support teams often pamper their clients, focusing on the importance of the client. Another advantage to these larger dedicated support teams is that multiple technicians bring their expertise to the table for the advantage of the client.

The Bad: While these larger support departments do provide customer comfort, quick response times, and collaborative solutions, unfortunately they are often not the most efficient model. Talking with your account manager to be directed to a support technician, who will contact the facility operations team that will eventually process your request requires time and money (your money specifically). One thing for the consumer to keep in mind is that they are paying the salaries of each of the members of these larger support department, and as a result their end cost will be higher.

Smaller Support Teams

The Good: Just as hosting companies with larger support teams carry the extra costs onto your bill, smaller support teams mean smaller expenses. Also, when dealing with smaller support teams, customers are usually in direct contact with the technicians working on the equipment, instead of having to go through mediators.

The Bad: Unfortunately due to their small number of employees, these support teams will occasionally not operate 24/7/365 to cut costs or will have on-call technicians who are not physically at the datacenter during off-peak hours. While saving money, these factors can become crippling if you encounter an emergency during the night or weekend, as waiting for techs to arrive at the datacenter means that your service disruptions will last longer, costing you precious uptime.

Fortunately for our clients, middle ground exists within this spectrum. The key in this decision is to find the right balance for your organization.

At Cyber Wurx, we weigh in on the smaller support staff side of things. Our clients talk directly to the techs who are processing their requests, ensuring knowledgeable and prompt responses and we avoid passing on costs of inflated staffing to our customers. By essentially replacing the roles of account manager and other intermediary positions through the use of our custom administrative tools, we are able to give customers the personal attention that is often lacking at smaller-staffed support teams. After all, customers are what keeps our business alive, and we want to make sure they know they’re appreciated.

When a customer writes in, we can immediately see past ticket requests, any special needs that they usually have, and other information that is useful in providing them with the quickest solution. Just as with the larger support firms, our techs collaborate on issues to ensure that customer problems are not only solved quickly, but as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We realize that emergencies don’t wait until “normal business hours” and our clients can rest assured that our datacenters are staffed 24/7 with on-site technicians, while still maintaining a very small-scale support staff.