Most people when they are looking for a web host tend to focus on one of two things, cost or reliability, the difference usually depends on their reason for building their website. While both are important considerations there is something that is actually more important, customer service. This should be the first thing that you look at when you are choosing a web host. If not you will regret it when you find that you need it.
The reason that you need quality customer service is that your website is important and you have to make sure that when it goes down you can get the problem solved quickly. Even the most reliable hosts will go down from time to time and when they do your site is not making any money for your business. In fact it may even be costing you money if people who can’t access your site go to your competitors to buy. In order to prevent this from happening you have to make sure that you are dealing with a hosting company that offers top quality customer service so that they can get you back up and running quickly.
The absolute most important thing when you are trying to assess the quality of a hosting company’s customer service is that they are available twenty four hours a day. Websites always seem to go down in the middle of the night or on the weekend, you can’t afford to wait until the morning to get it fixed, there needs to be somebody there to help you when you need their assistance.
One thing to keep in mind is that just because there is somebody there to answer the phone does not mean that they can actually help you. There are some hosting companies that use customer service representatives who do not have any technical skills but simply answer the phone and pass on messages to the people who can fix the problem. This is not a problem as long as the technical people are there twenty four hours a day, if they are not then it really doesn’t matter if there is somebody there to answer the phone.
There is a fairly easy way to check out the customer service of hosting company, all you have to do is call them. Try phoning in the middle of the night to see if anybody answers the phone and if they do how much help they are able to offer. This should give you a good idea of what kind of service you will get if you sign up for their service.
