A lot of companies in this industry claim to offer 24/7 support. From the smallest players in the game, to the largest. However, with all of the tiny hosts existing out there, claiming to offer 24/7 support, and never coming through with their promise, we tend to get a lot of customers who become amazed when we do actually answer their tickets during the most absurd hours of the day/night/year. However, before that happens, we always have to go through the ‘test round’ in which many customers choose to ‘rush’ us with what they believe is a profoundly complex question during what may or may not be a ’strange’ hour to look into such an incident. About 85% of these tickets are written in a barely-comprehensible manner, with customers barely explaining the problem they face. About 97% of them include at least one instance of “ASAP!!!!!!!”. About 98% of them are suprised when we answer their question in a matter of minutes. Typical “questions” include “MY WEBSITE IS DOWN! please resolve asap” when there are absolutely no server/network problems. Other requests include the restoration of a backup, explanation & resolving of errors php & perl scripts are spewing, or ‘install or configure this software on my dedicated server’ requests.

I work for a company who provides completely real 24/7/365 support. I myself was sitting in an office on December 31, 2008 at 11:59, this is proof of the fact. I can’t help but to feel a bit insulted when a long-time customer of ours responds as if we are typically away from our datacenter. I work directly outside of our second datacenter, and two doorways away from our first datacenter. It makes me feel like nobody really appreciates the hours that we work to support them. We have staff on site at all times, regardless of whether or not it’s a holiday, and we don’t even rely on a callcenter or third party company to help with the more minor requests. If you send an email to our technical support department, you’re going to be talking to myself, ryan, brad, sean, ben, kevin, or even the owner of our company, karl within at least 10 minutes of request, and if a solution exists, every staff member is going to be be able to handle any question or request you have. Every staff member works within our datacenter-side office, and you’re never going to be talking to someone who lives in india, or a callcenter. I’ve called the providers that our company works with, and been forwarded to callcenters in foreign countries. Granted, those companies don’t typically offer 24/7 support, but it’s still bothersome to have to deal with.

Kids, if you can’t offer 24/7 support, don’t advertise it. You’re fucking up the credibility of the industry, and it’s not helping anyone.