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Views on provider phone calls?
Hey,
The other day I got this call from CraftYourBox, I've got a 1GB $7/month service with them, they were just asking me how I was finding the service and if I had any queries.
Initially, I found this quite strange as being the only provider to do this, and I didn't know if I was singled out or if they were calling all LEB sign ups.
Anyhow, what do you guys think? Would you appreciate it if your LEB provider called you to say "Hi, is the service ok for you?".
I know some people would prefer it to be e-mailed, but then again, it's not the best method of direct communication. Possibly a slow day at the CYB Office? 
.
-Chris.
Comments
I don't even use a my real phone number
As 90% of our customers are International and international calls are expensive - it's not a low end solution
I would find it annoying. Do it as a ticket if required. I prefer an email to a phone call about something so simple.
I had a provider send me a Christmas card once. It weirded me out a little bit.
I don't think I would mind it, as long as they only call once, and if I don't answer (which I won't, since I won't recognize the number), leave a message. And then don't call me back again. Ever.
Perhaps they are just trying to be different.
Use Skype unlimited plans?
Unlimited World incl. China is AU$20.99/month - just to call customers to see how they are doing? No thanks.
@lbft I had a redstation christmas card.
@NickM Lol, sounds good.
@Concerto49 as @Dalcomp said, for the minimal cost of skype unlimited, something like $15-20/month for pretty much unlimited minutes anywhere, it's surely worth it, you could also set that up as a Direct Number in the US so people can call it.
Which is fine, but when you add 24/7 Phone Support those are no longer LEB plans.
Unlimited World incl. China is AU$20.99/month - just to call customers to see how they are doing? No thanks.
If they have subscribed to it for business calls, then extending the use for customer survey wouldn't hurt.
True - that. I was only referring to adding it just to call customers to say hi. Not the overall solution.
I think it is a nice touch.
I also think some random postal type mailing to be good also. It stands you out from the online-only hordes.
I've got calls to over 30 countries, £13 line rental and £4 additional and can forward to my mobile.
@Concerto49
True, but if you have a techie issue you're working on with a client and would prefer it to be more 'live' than e-mails every 15 mins, then a headset and skype can be the ideal solution to talk to the client.
It adds 'professionalism' in my books, you can then evaluate if the provider knows what he's talking about or he's just copy pasta stuff from howto forge.
.
Obviously, as you said, unmanaged LEB, but if you have a dedicated number, then the client can call if they have a major issue they need your immediate attention to, for example, their service being down, or their billing not working.
@pubcrawler postal mail would be interesting, there's companies out there that would do that for you I'm sure. I'd love to send some out to every 100th customer or something. It's something that's unique, different and makes the client have that short burst of 'oh wow, they actually care enough to pay $0.50 on a stamp'.
Obviously for plans like @Damian's .50 plan, it's not viable, the number itself would cost 10x plan cost, but still, with companies who have an active 100+ clients, it's viable in my books, it's something i'd look into if i was still in the market.
You've got to draw the line however, you could go onto saying you could send text-messages a week before their invoice date, or when an update comes to their ticket, but that's just getting too personal, it's a nice touch for OVH but not for every joe-bloggs VM company.
-Chris.
I find this weird and nice in the same time, this happened to me once but under other circumstances with a Romanian company, I called them to ask something about a VPS and they didn't answer, 5 minutes later they called me back, they apologized for not answering the phone call and asked me how can they help me.
@eastonch - it's not just support - there are a lot of issues with doing it, e.g. language barriers and if calling in English works. A lot of users might be Chinese, French... whatever... and might not speak English very well.
It gets complicated and is not a simple solution.
I really like to give our customers a call and chat with them about if our service is working out for them, and if there's anything we can improve on. We tried an email survey, but didn't get a good response.
We don't call our LEB/DP/WHT/etc customers (or send them things), since that seems to freak them out. There was quite a lengthy thread on here where I posted a fake name and email; caused a terrible debacle where I was lynched and nearly killed; received death threats over the situation.
We've called our "higher-end" customers though, and have discussed improving their service. Even with the cost of international calls, reaching out to customers to tell them "hello, we care!" pays dividends, both in being able to sell the different or more services, and word of mouth from them.
I got a card and selection box too :P
We're on the phone with our clients pretty much every day
@Damian
Currently, I'm working with a company which I won't disclose at this time, but they have some high'er' profile clients, whereas they're using the VM as an actual production server and not just a mess around box. They frequently send tickets in requesting something or another, we found that a phone call surely helped them.
And you're right, Word of Mouth is brilliant, as soon as they say, 'My host calls me' and 'gives a fuck', the initial opinion is already heightened.
I still think that some LEB Clients should be called, even if it's for verification of an upgrade, or soemthing they wouldnt normally do, I have started calling all Dedicated Server orders, just to confirm their setups on the RAID information etc, there's nothing worse than a 24hour setup time, delayed to 48 hours because of a mis-communication partition requirement.
-Chris.
I'm in the process of setting up my business phone server. I will be calling almost every order for confirmation, may as well ask if there is anything else I can help them with.
I'd ask you to stop calling
FWIW, Maxmind has this available: http://www.maxmind.com/en/telephone_overview
Will probably be cheaper, and your customers will like it better since they will be able to verify immediately, instead of waiting for you to call them.
True...
But it would be more personal, like I actually care about them no matter if they have a $300 dedicated server or a $3 hosting account.
Anyone can pickup free SIM Cards these days, and just topup to do this specificly. I would rather manually confirm each order, rather than rely on maxmind entirely.
The OVH or Microsoft or any other big companies they simply don't care about customers as they have millions of them, but some small companies do care about their service and customer and for this reason they do customer service check - phone calls with questions.
I'm going to add the maxmind fraud call thing. To make sure it is their phone number. Then I won't be wasting minutes of they gave me a bs number.
oh no
What?
so you're going to waste money on both MaxMind phone verification, as well as whatever you pay for phone calls, just to verify every order you get?
k
Yes. It's worth not having fraud occur.