I’ve been in this industry for quite a while and have used many network providers, colocation providers, and hosting companies. We at 1-800-HOSTING even maintain presences at other providers for monitoring, custom projects, remote backups, etc… and sometimes the service at times has been less than stellar. Here are a few of the experiences I’ve had throughout the years and how we use this as motivation to make sure our customers don’t experience the pitfalls I’ve suffered through.

• Answer the support telephone: When offering phone support it is important to make sure that someone is available to answer it. Nothing can be more frustrating than not being able to get someone on the phone quickly during an emergency.
• Respond to emails promptly, even if it’s just a “Hey we’re looking into this and we’ll get back with you soon.” This lets me know that someone has looked at the issue and is aware. Setting a time of when I should expect a response is even better so I can plan out my already busy day.
• Send maintenance notifications out with as much notice as possible. If it’s an emergency even an hour’s notice is much better than none at all.
• When an outage occurs give as much information possible as to what caused it and what is being done to correct the issue. When I get brief and non-technical responses at times it makes me feel unsure if you know exactly what is happening.
• If an outage is due to a human error just say so! I’d much rather hear that someone has made a mistake (it happens to everyone) than get a vague response about what caused the issue.