Technical Support

Why do we need technical support for our websites? If something goes wrong, and you do not know what the problem is, technical support can help you find what is wrong and help you fix it.

Technical support staff is people who have worked on websites and networks, have gone to school to become certified in this type of work. They know their hardware, software, wires, connections, and coding. If you can explain the problem clearly, answer all their questions to the best of your ability, they can pinpoint your problem and tell you, in terms you will understand, how to fix it.

Good technical support is not hard to find. Assess what you already know. If you already know how to build a website and make it look more than just presentable, but just do not know how to put that audio on to it, tech support can help you. Choose a hosting company that offers technical support at any time, not just business hours, because catching and fixing an error sooner rather than later can mean a sale or a client.

Another consideration would be whether your hosting company's technical support responds to service requests quickly or puts you in a queue to get to when they can. Your website is your business… and it is theirs. You pay them to be there when you need them, and if you need technical support now, that support should be there right when you need it. This comes right back to having the support at any time and not just during business hours.

Your host company should also offer proactive notification of maintenance. They should let you know when they will be doing maintenance on the server so that should have a chat room or other interactive item, you can let your users know that you will be down for a period of time for site maintenance. Most people are understanding and appreciative of being told that the site will be unavailable between certain times so that you can enhance your site for their benefit.

Providing documentation on new features of their hosting and their technical support is a nice feature your hosting company should have. Whether you use it or not is entirely up to you, but if you are technology challenged, it is a nice thing to have so that you can reference it at any time. The documentation should also be very easy to find on the website. The information is important to you, and locating it is essential to your business. Knowing how to use a feature you have never used before is an asset to your website - even if you never do use it.

If you ask your hosting company for training, your request should be answered promptly. The host company should be happy to provide you with any training you want or need to maintain your site. If you want to put an audio feature on your website, they should be the ones to train you how to put it on, how to maintain it, how to change it, and anything else that pertains to the audio features.

You should be able to access technical support any way you choose. Email, live chat, or telephone should be available. Live chat or telephone is generally the best way to access the help you require. Using the telephone or live chat, you can locate the items they tell you to find, make the small changes, and answer your questions as you go along. They will be patient with you as you search, fix, and edit your website.

Tech support is a great way to learn how to do things yourself. After you have been helped once, you know how to do it should your problem arise again. However, if you forget, they will be happy to assist you again. They will log your assistance and when they see that they have helped you with the same problem before, they will be happy to refresh your memory by going through it all over again with you. After all, that is what tech support is there for.