Human support, or how does the technical support service hosting provider FASTVPS
Hello! We are technical support hosting provider FASTVPS . The company has been operating for more than 10 years, so perhaps you have already heard about us somewhere. FASTVPS provides for rent virtual servers VPS / VDS and dedicated dedicated servers.
We have our own data center in Estonia, our own equipment at the co-location in St. Petersburg (Selectel), and of course, dedicated servers at HETZNER Online, as well as our own equipment in the USA (olo, Atlanta).
A total of approximately 16,000 virtual and dedicated servers are serviced and a little less than the most diverse clients (but we all love the same!).
')
Today, the support team has 18 engineers in two offices - in St. Petersburg and in the city of Johvi (Estonia).
The Estonian unit is also engaged in a full data center support cycle and serves co-location clients.
And it so happened that the level, quality, adequacy and speed of our supportrs became one of the key advantages of FASTVPS.
If the prices and parameters of "iron" for most major hosting providers, plus or minus the same, then it is the human factor that decides - and in this we try to be ahead!
Today we would like to tell a little about how our work is organized and why we love it no less than our wonderful clients!
It all starts on the job search site (or directly on our site , where there is a corresponding “Career” section) when the future support person sees our ad. Some come themselves, directly to our office, and this also sometimes ends in a happy marriage, uh, i.e. employment :) Even at the stage of filling out the application on the site, we ask future colleagues to answer simple questions, unfortunately, we have to reject those who are too lazy to do it.
For successful employment it is necessary to pass at least three interviews (with the support manager, office director and company director), including with the participation of potential colleagues, and it is not necessary that they will also be from the support department. During the first interview, the candidate will also be offered a fairly serious test task with a time limit.
If everything went well and you became a part of our dream team, then ahead, as probably in any other job, you will be waited for by such stages as training, an internship under the supervision of a senior employee, several testing stages and only after that (possibly) independent exit "in the field".
We can not fail to notice that in addition to technical knowledge, we actively inculcate our corporate traditions of excellent customer service to our colleagues!
The freshly born support person starts work on the 1st support line, which requires substantial qualification, however, is limited in terms of decisions and responsibility. In addition, these employees also help our wonderful managers in online chat with technical questions and continue to actively learn and gain experience from senior colleagues and in the process of solving tickets, of course.
Here is the ticket support system from the technical support side:
Many probably learned the interface of the WHMCS billing system, which was significantly improved by our best developer for our needs. Both the administrative and client part has undergone a serious modification.
The general queue of applications, waiting time, a lot of links to a variety of related work tools, a list of currently active employees.
Unfortunately, we had to hide some secret chips from the header, but besides them, there are, for example, such things as the number of unprocessed complaints, reports of the monitoring system of hard drives, data center tickets, various notifications of the customer service department ( , callbacks ordered from the site or from those who can not figure out the ordering procedure) and many other useful tools.
After the ticket is created by the client, we automatically check the server for work and, if possible (the client has provided a password), some of its metrics. Tickets with non-working servers are placed at the beginning of the queue.
Page ticket technical support looks like. It is here that there is communication with the client and there is access to the server analysis tools (for example, the response to ping, the amount of free disk space and their SMART status in the case of a dedicated server) and work with the service itself. If several employees work on a ticket, they can discuss something in the chat, which is visible in the upper right corner of the screen. In the same place, employees see who exactly is working on the ticket right now. The system blocks the ability to respond to a ticket, if another employee has already started doing it, in order to avoid confusion.
We could talk for a long time about the technical side of the process, but we are sincerely sure that this will tire our noble reader and therefore, let me introduce to you a kind of squeeze from this philosophy, if you like, that we have invented and use in our daily work
Here, perhaps, everything is obvious. It is necessary to answer as quickly as possible, because, as a rule, a person who makes a request or for help, is under serious stress and is waiting for a response to his request as soon as possible.
The time limit for answering a ticket given to us by the regulation is no more than 30 minutes, and in 90% of cases we fit in this time, for example, the graph of the average response time for this year:
The average number of applications that you manage to process per working day is 55. On a weekday, we receive about 450 tickets, to which technical support employees give an average of 900 responses, that is, approximately two answers per ticket.
FASTVPS technical support staff holds competitions: the best in the number of answers are weekly encouraged. Naturally, provided that the quality is not affected - this is determined by the customer ratings.
Customer issues have a wide range. We answer both questions from the “which button to click next” area, and questions related to server administration or site operation.
The complexity of the issue depends on the level of knowledge of the client, for novice users, problems often begin as early as the DNS setup phase. Among the reasons for which FASTVPS receives positive customer feedback is the responsiveness of our technical support service.
We try to help our clients in any situation, often doing much more than the rules provide.
“Speak to the client in his language” can be understood literally: FASTVPS support operators know not only Russian, but also English. In addition, if the user is clearly inexperienced - we try to give extremely simple and clear answers, do not load with complicated terminology and professional jargon.
Our managers also always require us to be one step ahead of the client and anticipate his questions and wishes, so that the VPS service that is not always clear is not more complicated than the usual shared hosting.
And it also happens as in the screenshot below:
Technical support service is, first of all, a team. As mentioned above, several people can work with one ticket, and there is a chat system in the ticket management system in which employees can discuss some issues. In addition to each shift, there is a duty officer who, in addition to his main work with tickets, is also responsible for all abnormal situations, and who is addressed by questions from other departments or managers. In the most difficult situations, a system administrator or even a technical director who is sitting right there can come to the rescue.
After the completion of the case, which caused difficulties (for example, we had to work with a new or highly specialized software on the client's server), we update our internal knowledge base, organized on the Atlassian Confluence Wiki engine, in order to work faster and more efficiently next time. 20
Numerous instructions and regulations for support staff are also stored there, which help all employees respond equally effectively, politely and professionally to questions raised by our favorite customers.
There are also such cases when a client complicates the work of technical support and confuses himself, not knowing that individual problems can be solved much easier. A simple example is adding an alias for a site. We often encounter situations when this action was achieved by creating an additional site in the control panel. And this is instead of editing the main one and changing one small parameter. To work in technical support, you need skills to communicate with inexperienced users and a large amount of patience.
And here we will make a small digression and turn rather to those on the other side of the screen: in an adequate company, support is always on your side! Believe me, we are not going to make your website slow down, the whole place is over, viruses or some other horrors are wound up, the most important thing for us is to make you satisfied! And yes, we are paid precisely for this, because otherwise it would have been easier and cheaper not to hire us. If something goes wrong with us, maybe we just need a little more time. Please, treat the support person more gently - he is also a person!
Considering the duration of shifts (9 and 12 hours) and the high pace of work, the management decided to make it possible for staff, in addition to the standard rest room, to be distracted and keep themselves in good shape. For this we have a punching bag and horizontal bar. Even take place championships on pull-ups, at the last the winner could improve his result by 18 pull-ups.
If you once read on Habré a tour of our office , then you probably know that we have free lunches (and in fact, breakfasts and dinners), coffee, snacks, sweets and even a massage chair with billiards. Honestly, it also helps a lot to come to the aid of customers in a great mood!
Sometimes there are very confusing stories, which of course also need to be prepared. For example, a recent case. Late in the evening I received a request from the client: “an additional IP on the server is not available in the morning, what's the matter ?!”. We performed diagnostics, the IP address was blocked by the data center. No reasons were found for blocking outright (no complaints recently, no attacks on IP were recorded). They requested a reason from the data center. The technicians redirected the answer to the abuse department, and it works exclusively during business hours (from 9 to 6). We were dissatisfied with punching for no reason, we already tuned in to a small scandal. "What's the matter? The IP address has been unavailable for more than 12 hours, and we do not intend to wait until morning for a response from the abuse department! ”The technicians responded with something like the following:“ The IP address was blocked not for 12 hours, but for half a year already. So, please wait another 8 hours, and you will be sent a complaint to the IP address of six months ago. ”
Of course, this is not all that we would like to tell about - but tickets in the queue do not wait, and our customers deserve to receive an answer as quickly as possible!
If you have any specific questions or you want to become part of our team, please contact us at job@fastvps.ru or leave them directly in the comments :)
Here you can read reviews about the support of FASTVPS: hosting101.ru/fastvps.ru | searchengines.guru
Thank you for reading, we hope that it was interesting! FASTVPS website, where there is information about all services, all possible parameters and prices for virtual and dedicated servers - here .
We have our own data center in Estonia, our own equipment at the co-location in St. Petersburg (Selectel), and of course, dedicated servers at HETZNER Online, as well as our own equipment in the USA (olo, Atlanta).
A total of approximately 16,000 virtual and dedicated servers are serviced and a little less than the most diverse clients (but we all love the same!).
')
Today, the support team has 18 engineers in two offices - in St. Petersburg and in the city of Johvi (Estonia).
The Estonian unit is also engaged in a full data center support cycle and serves co-location clients.
And it so happened that the level, quality, adequacy and speed of our supportrs became one of the key advantages of FASTVPS.
If the prices and parameters of "iron" for most major hosting providers, plus or minus the same, then it is the human factor that decides - and in this we try to be ahead!
Today we would like to tell a little about how our work is organized and why we love it no less than our wonderful clients!
It all starts on the job search site (or directly on our site , where there is a corresponding “Career” section) when the future support person sees our ad. Some come themselves, directly to our office, and this also sometimes ends in a happy marriage, uh, i.e. employment :) Even at the stage of filling out the application on the site, we ask future colleagues to answer simple questions, unfortunately, we have to reject those who are too lazy to do it.
For successful employment it is necessary to pass at least three interviews (with the support manager, office director and company director), including with the participation of potential colleagues, and it is not necessary that they will also be from the support department. During the first interview, the candidate will also be offered a fairly serious test task with a time limit.
If everything went well and you became a part of our dream team, then ahead, as probably in any other job, you will be waited for by such stages as training, an internship under the supervision of a senior employee, several testing stages and only after that (possibly) independent exit "in the field".
We can not fail to notice that in addition to technical knowledge, we actively inculcate our corporate traditions of excellent customer service to our colleagues!
The freshly born support person starts work on the 1st support line, which requires substantial qualification, however, is limited in terms of decisions and responsibility. In addition, these employees also help our wonderful managers in online chat with technical questions and continue to actively learn and gain experience from senior colleagues and in the process of solving tickets, of course.
Here is the ticket support system from the technical support side:
Many probably learned the interface of the WHMCS billing system, which was significantly improved by our best developer for our needs. Both the administrative and client part has undergone a serious modification.
The general queue of applications, waiting time, a lot of links to a variety of related work tools, a list of currently active employees.
Unfortunately, we had to hide some secret chips from the header, but besides them, there are, for example, such things as the number of unprocessed complaints, reports of the monitoring system of hard drives, data center tickets, various notifications of the customer service department ( , callbacks ordered from the site or from those who can not figure out the ordering procedure) and many other useful tools.
After the ticket is created by the client, we automatically check the server for work and, if possible (the client has provided a password), some of its metrics. Tickets with non-working servers are placed at the beginning of the queue.
Page ticket technical support looks like. It is here that there is communication with the client and there is access to the server analysis tools (for example, the response to ping, the amount of free disk space and their SMART status in the case of a dedicated server) and work with the service itself. If several employees work on a ticket, they can discuss something in the chat, which is visible in the upper right corner of the screen. In the same place, employees see who exactly is working on the ticket right now. The system blocks the ability to respond to a ticket, if another employee has already started doing it, in order to avoid confusion.
We could talk for a long time about the technical side of the process, but we are sincerely sure that this will tire our noble reader and therefore, let me introduce to you a kind of squeeze from this philosophy, if you like, that we have invented and use in our daily work
1. Respond quickly, do not leave applications unanswered.
Here, perhaps, everything is obvious. It is necessary to answer as quickly as possible, because, as a rule, a person who makes a request or for help, is under serious stress and is waiting for a response to his request as soon as possible.
The time limit for answering a ticket given to us by the regulation is no more than 30 minutes, and in 90% of cases we fit in this time, for example, the graph of the average response time for this year:
The average number of applications that you manage to process per working day is 55. On a weekday, we receive about 450 tickets, to which technical support employees give an average of 900 responses, that is, approximately two answers per ticket.
FASTVPS technical support staff holds competitions: the best in the number of answers are weekly encouraged. Naturally, provided that the quality is not affected - this is determined by the customer ratings.
2. Do not refuse help. Human attitude is above all!
Customer issues have a wide range. We answer both questions from the “which button to click next” area, and questions related to server administration or site operation.
The complexity of the issue depends on the level of knowledge of the client, for novice users, problems often begin as early as the DNS setup phase. Among the reasons for which FASTVPS receives positive customer feedback is the responsiveness of our technical support service.
We try to help our clients in any situation, often doing much more than the rules provide.
3. Speak to the user in his language and be on the same wavelength
“Speak to the client in his language” can be understood literally: FASTVPS support operators know not only Russian, but also English. In addition, if the user is clearly inexperienced - we try to give extremely simple and clear answers, do not load with complicated terminology and professional jargon.
Our managers also always require us to be one step ahead of the client and anticipate his questions and wishes, so that the VPS service that is not always clear is not more complicated than the usual shared hosting.
And it also happens as in the screenshot below:
4. Always be ready to help colleagues and do not hesitate to ask for help.
Technical support service is, first of all, a team. As mentioned above, several people can work with one ticket, and there is a chat system in the ticket management system in which employees can discuss some issues. In addition to each shift, there is a duty officer who, in addition to his main work with tickets, is also responsible for all abnormal situations, and who is addressed by questions from other departments or managers. In the most difficult situations, a system administrator or even a technical director who is sitting right there can come to the rescue.
After the completion of the case, which caused difficulties (for example, we had to work with a new or highly specialized software on the client's server), we update our internal knowledge base, organized on the Atlassian Confluence Wiki engine, in order to work faster and more efficiently next time. 20
Numerous instructions and regulations for support staff are also stored there, which help all employees respond equally effectively, politely and professionally to questions raised by our favorite customers.
5. To understand the user, think like a user!
There are also such cases when a client complicates the work of technical support and confuses himself, not knowing that individual problems can be solved much easier. A simple example is adding an alias for a site. We often encounter situations when this action was achieved by creating an additional site in the control panel. And this is instead of editing the main one and changing one small parameter. To work in technical support, you need skills to communicate with inexperienced users and a large amount of patience.
And here we will make a small digression and turn rather to those on the other side of the screen: in an adequate company, support is always on your side! Believe me, we are not going to make your website slow down, the whole place is over, viruses or some other horrors are wound up, the most important thing for us is to make you satisfied! And yes, we are paid precisely for this, because otherwise it would have been easier and cheaper not to hire us. If something goes wrong with us, maybe we just need a little more time. Please, treat the support person more gently - he is also a person!
6. Do not forget to let off steam
Considering the duration of shifts (9 and 12 hours) and the high pace of work, the management decided to make it possible for staff, in addition to the standard rest room, to be distracted and keep themselves in good shape. For this we have a punching bag and horizontal bar. Even take place championships on pull-ups, at the last the winner could improve his result by 18 pull-ups.
If you once read on Habré a tour of our office , then you probably know that we have free lunches (and in fact, breakfasts and dinners), coffee, snacks, sweets and even a massage chair with billiards. Honestly, it also helps a lot to come to the aid of customers in a great mood!
7. Be ready to investigate with an unexpected outcome
Sometimes there are very confusing stories, which of course also need to be prepared. For example, a recent case. Late in the evening I received a request from the client: “an additional IP on the server is not available in the morning, what's the matter ?!”. We performed diagnostics, the IP address was blocked by the data center. No reasons were found for blocking outright (no complaints recently, no attacks on IP were recorded). They requested a reason from the data center. The technicians redirected the answer to the abuse department, and it works exclusively during business hours (from 9 to 6). We were dissatisfied with punching for no reason, we already tuned in to a small scandal. "What's the matter? The IP address has been unavailable for more than 12 hours, and we do not intend to wait until morning for a response from the abuse department! ”The technicians responded with something like the following:“ The IP address was blocked not for 12 hours, but for half a year already. So, please wait another 8 hours, and you will be sent a complaint to the IP address of six months ago. ”
Of course, this is not all that we would like to tell about - but tickets in the queue do not wait, and our customers deserve to receive an answer as quickly as possible!
If you have any specific questions or you want to become part of our team, please contact us at job@fastvps.ru or leave them directly in the comments :)
Here you can read reviews about the support of FASTVPS: hosting101.ru/fastvps.ru | searchengines.guru
Thank you for reading, we hope that it was interesting! FASTVPS website, where there is information about all services, all possible parameters and prices for virtual and dedicated servers - here .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/314178/
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