Support Overlaod

Has anyone else noticed that the number of open support requests has grown from around 225 to just on 500?

As a large user and promoter of Dreamhost services this increase is a bit worrying.

What plans are in place by Dreamhost to address this situation before it starts to spiral out of control?

Why has the Live Chat support, which used to be available every other day, basically ceased to exist?

DH will do the exact same thing that they did earlier in the year when their support ques hit 1000+, they will ignore the problem and simply throw more bandwith and disk space at people to shut them up...no one is minding the store yet again!



IAmAtMyWitsEnd

I'm not talking of 1 off spikes. I'm referring to the day to day quantity of open requests.

But I do appreciate your remark that it would appear they would just throw out more free stuff.

I think the pricing is just fine as it is. I feel that they should perhaps should look at putting the money they are throwing away with all these new deals into some genuine support changes.

I don't live in the US so I cannot get access to the call back service that I pay for in my hosting costs. So I was utilising the Live Chat feature when I needed a more direct approach to support. However they, DH, have stopped using it. They did actually remove it one time and I complained that it was a valueable service and should remain. It just site there now taunting us non-US customers.

Any comment direct to support about this is responded to with a canned script which, quite frankly, is disapppointing.

= =
Has anyone else noticed that the number of open support requests has grown from around 225 to just on 500?

As a large user and promoter of Dreamhost services this increase is a bit worrying.
= =

500? I thought I saw ~800 a couple days ago. :-) Wouldn't you expect the steady-state number to rise with the number of customers? I'm sure DH wants to decrease the number with good Kbase/FAQ, Forum, Wiki, etc., but won't there always be some percentage of customers who ask questions of Support rather than research other sources, run into problems due to software glitches, etc.? Wouldn't it be a waste to have such a large Support staff that you could answer every question within a few minutes?

> Any comment direct to support about this is responded to with a canned script which, quite frankly, is disapppointing.

What does the canned script say?

Regards,

BobS

// 500? I thought I saw ~800 a couple days ago. :-)

Well as I said before. Spikes are spikes. I'm talking the "Steady State' as you so eloquently put it.

// Wouldn't you expect the steady-state number to rise with the number of customers?

Sure! I also expect Dreamhost to increase their support services to cover it.

// I'm sure DH wants to decrease the number with good Kbase/FAQ, Forum, Wiki, etc., but won't there always be some percentage of customers who ask questions of Support rather than research other sources, run into problems due to software glitches, etc.?

Well perhaps they could put some effort into bringing the Kbase up to date? This would perhaps decrease the need to contact support.

//Wouldn't it be a waste to have such a large Support staff that you could answer every question within a few minutes?

No. Not necessarily. It would reduce the amount of whining about DH on other forums and increase the amount of referrals I get. It would also improve DH customer relations :)

//What does the canned script say?

Livechat is still in beta so it is not always available. / We don't always have the time to be on it.

> I'm talking the "Steady State' as you so eloquently put it.

My main point is that number by itself doesn't mean too much.

> Sure! I also expect Dreamhost to increase their support services to cover it.

Seems like there's a natural increase in backlog total.

For example (all made up numbers):

Customers, Support Staffers, SS Request Backlog
10k, 1, 100
20k, 2, 200
30k, 3, 300
40k, 4, 400
50k, 5, 500


> Well perhaps they could put some effort into bringing the Kbase up to date? This would perhaps decrease the need to contact support.

Yes, but it also takes work/money to keep up to date, and some (I think significant) number of people won't even bother looking first (based on questions here in the forum). I think the wiki is an effort to more cheaply (using non-employee labor) keep a FAQ type resource up to date.

> It would reduce the amount of whining about DH on other forums and increase the amount of referrals I get. It would also improve DH customer relations :)

I hear ya.

10k, 2, 0
20k, 4, 0
30k, 6, 0
40k, 8, 0
50k, 10, 0

Question is: which increases money to buy more tree-hugs, new bikes and DVD players for the Honchos? :-) Not to mention updates in hardware and software for "our" servers...

Cheers,

BobS

I imagine the large increase in support requests is linked to the large number of new sign-ups the 888 promotion generated. Everytime a new customer signs up there seems to be a flurry of urgent request to the support team: 'how do i ftp into my account?' 'how do i set up my email?' 'how do i create my homepage?'

Hey!

We have been having a huge support load the last three weeks actually. It caught us a little by surprise, and we've been adding support personnel rapidly in an attempt to catch-up, but there's generally a few months lag between hiring somebody and them becoming a really productive member of the support team.

We kind of had a "perfect storm" of support due to:

1. The 888 sale caused a lot of new signups which always means a lot more support.

2. The 777 sale was a year ago, and so a whole bunch of people are up for their first renewal at regular prices which is causing a lot of billing-related support.

3. We JUST finished upgrading all our shared hosting servers to sarge from woody, and although it was a pretty smooth process that always generates some support.

4. Finally, we made some fairly big changes to the way our web panel works, which made for some confusion as well as some bugs that have all pretty much been ironed out now.

From these four events our daily support load literally DOUBLED starting in late September. We sort of expect now that 888 is over, the sarge updating is done, 777 is past it's year anniversary, the panel changes have sunk in, and we've added some more support people that things will hopefully calm down within the next week.

I guess we'll see!

josh!

Josh,
perhaps it would be sensible to put a link to your reply into your calendar for two weeks (or three months) prior to DH 9-year birthday into your personal calendar? Just so that this mess won't repeat itself yet again. You could have anticipated some of the factors of that "perfect storm", so I hope you'll do just that next year.

TorbenGB

josh,

all due respect and with respect to the phrase "perfect storm", I would politely ask that you not refer to that unspeakable real tradgedy in reference to your poor, disorganized business module. With that being said, I fail to understand why time and time again you folks are always facing disaster-yet seem to be caught surprised by it? :s

I have been with you folks long enough to see the trend repeat itself at least three times now and it befuddles me how intelligent peeps like yourselves can continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

That being said and speaking of "meteorological" terms, I would loosely compare DHs handling of these issues which ALWAYS occur during a prepared sales boom or during a scheduled major upgrade to that of the Government's handling of Katrina - Everyone knew that storm was coming, yet nobody seemed to have a plan in dealing with it's effects and just like bushie, josh comes out of nowhere to work on "damage control"

I never criticize without at least dolling out an ounce of advice, so I am about to inflict that ounce upon ya....

*looks into his crystal ball* I predict later this year around the holiday season DH will launch another very successful sales drive, the support que will be thrown into the stratosphere, and lastly, Josh will make an appearance to quell the loyalists uprising....heres an idea, HIRE SOME TECH STAFF BEFORE LAUNCHING THE NEXT GREAT SALES DRIVE!!!!! And adjust those hirings to fit your learning curve, that way you will be PREPARED for this next time

Chris


IAmAtMyWitsEnd

In reply to:

---

I would politely ask that you not refer to that unspeakable real tradgedy

---

What? George Clooney doing a Down East accent?

<What? George Clooney doing a Down East accent?>

Now that was pretty funny....but, no, im referring to the real life "Andrea Gale" story :)


IAmAtMyWitsEnd

all due respect and with respect to the phrase "perfect storm", I would politely ask that you not refer to that unspeakable real tradgedy

"Perfect storm" is a term that can be applied to anything that fits the defintion. It does not refer to any one incident, regardless of what Hollywood would have you believe.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Perfect+storm
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_storm

HTH.

In reply to:

---

I have been with you folks long enough to see the trend repeat itself at least three times now and it befuddles me how intelligent peeps like yourselves can continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

---

I wonder though. How much of that is just a temporary surge, and settles back down to normal numbers after the customser get settled into their new account? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the numbers of tickts increase over a longer time peroid, and support personel need to be added to handel that. But these bursts, are perhaps more like the 'perfect storm' as Josh put it. They get a lot more customers, and have a huge influx of support requests - How do I do that, how do I do this? That's not working, I don't understand... you get the picture. But once users get things figured out thigns quite down.

I know that was the case for me when I signed up. I had soem confusion about how to set up my new domain here, and I was haivng problems getting my berkeley database transfered over and working. So in the first week I had maybe 10 support requests. But after that, I have only put in maybe 10 tickets over the following year.

So things have been a littel rough recently with the sarge upgrades sitll going through, a new sale with lots of happy customers. But in an other week things will settle down to a more normal level, where say one or maybe two new support techs need to be hired. But to have kept things at a more normal level during the sale 5 or 6 people would had have to been hired - and then not needed in a two weeks.

I don't believe there is any way trying to train temps would work out - enless you want to get all copy and past responses from support during the sale - somehting like I'm used to getting from other companies, everything looks good on this end, are you sure it's not just a problem with your computer? Or the even better responses - it works for everyone else, so it has to work for you. I commonly got such responses from a previous company.

I'd rather wait longer to get a real responses from a professional, than a fast response from a person who knows how to copy and paste, and if lucky type a few extra words. So yeah, plan ahead and hire support staff before the big sale so they are trained up and ready to go for it's realse, but I still think that there's going to be a big influx of support requests that will push the number high for about 2 weeks, and then it will settle down agian.

just my honest opinion, don't go balistic on me



-Matttail

yes, perfect storm is an old fisherman expression for a kind of storm, as told in the book. Otherwise it would have been a pretty insensitive title too. ;-)

I've had some mySQL issues and mail issues but fixed 'em (some caused by my own sloppy houskeeping). A new user might be pretty put off by the confusion and seeming lack of support however.

I remember DH before the "perfect storm" sites worked day in and day out with very little issues and when you had a problem DH was quick to help.

Then this year DH grew and grew and grew, support times went up and up and up, continuous issues with DNS, MYSQL DB's, panels would just stop functioning or take hours to make changes, if at all..

The company that I knew that tried hard to help has gone to a company that is trying hard to keep up.

There is a rule in business, when you outgrow the capacity of your internal business procedures the first person who suffers is the customer and when we, your customers needed support we suffered for hours on end.. So I voted with my feet and left, now when I need support I get an answer in 30 minutes not 30 hours..

I wonder how many will leave before DH realise that without adequate support, having great plans is meaningless and instead of blaming support queues on popular plans why don't you instead ask the really really hard question, why accept thousands of new signups when you know , that you cannot cope with your current support load?

How does one contact billing directly? Is it only through the support form?

I noticed there is a rather large charge on my account that is going to try and bill me in a few days. I want to know where the charge came from but support seems to be rather slow right now.

Do they not have an actual phone number I can call to get this resolved in 10 minutes instead of over 24 hours??

The skinny is this:

I recently tranfered a domain to Dreamhost that was previously with Network Solutions since January of 1998. Now, suddenly, Dreamhost is trying to charge me for an 8 year renewal fee that pays me up until Jan of 2007 which I was already paid up until.

I can't afford this erroneous charge to hit my account.

Any thoughts on what next to do aside from sit and wait??

If you send an email to billing they will get back to you. It sounds like some sort of mistake because I have never heard of an 8 year renewal.

Billing have been very quick in getting back to me in the past. Hang in there I'm sure it will be something simple.

In reply to:

---

I have never heard of an 8 year renewal.

---

You can renew for as many years as you want. You can pay for 10 or 15 or however many years of registry you want. Some places even give discounts the more years you purchase at a time.



-Matttail

Both IAmAtMyWitsEnd and mattail are correct -- all of the factors leading up to this doubling of support requests were extremely predictable, and could very easily (and should) have been accounted for. Yet more than likely this surge would be purely temporary, meaning you go through all the hassle of interviewing people, giving them office space, getting them trained and up to speed, only to have to let them go after 3-6 months.

So here's an idea. There are dozens of people on this very forum who are already handling a lot of support's load by answering questions here. Pick a few people with good track records in terms of politeness, accuracy of responses, etc. and train them on the "DreamHost way" of customer service and whatnot, give them access to some sort of panel, and then when support starts spiking, start filing support requests over to them. They might possibly even do this on a credit-based system (for every X handled support requests, you get a free month of hosting) rather than for a salary, just because they like this company and want to see it NOT turn into the kind of host we all moved to DH to get away from initially.

Very interesting idea. I can think of several issues that could crop up, but with the right system and training it might be a possibility...



-Matttail

You could rather easily include a "Did this answer help you?" and, of course, the ability for the online support team to pick and choose questions they feel best suited to answer.

This would definately work best for those new user types of questions, and so definately would work well for sales periods.

Currently 886 Open Support Requests........

One of mine: Message Age: 2 days 13 hours

What is really going on Dreamhost???

I agree.

Message Age: 3 days 13 hours


I'm begining to wonder if their support queue is not getting the older ones and only pulling from the newest requests.

There have been some interesting opinions posed in this thread! We have grown a lot this year and we have made some mistakes along the way and there have been and continue to be some problems as a result.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes that makes it not always possible for us to act on plans we have made. In some cases we have pre-planned for a specific situation and have been prepared to handle it in a timely manner only to have another completely unexpected obstacle thrown in the way. These are our problems and not yours, of course, so there's no need to go into detail.

To address the support concerns, we have already hired 4 additional support techs just in the last couple of weeks. 2 of them have started working and 2 more will start soon. Our support team is close to double the size it was a year ago now. Like Josh mentioned a month or so ago, it takes time for a new support tech to be fully helpful. Likewise it takes us a little time to find new hires that meet our high hiring standards.

The support response times are currently well above our set standards and we are taking steps to improve that as well as improve problem resolution times. We have a couple of new tools and procedures we are putting into place that we believe will help as well.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

"These are our problems and not yours, of course, so there's no need to go into detail."
When these problems begin to effect the availability of our sites / email and our users/customers the problems do become ours and we have to provide answers as well. I think that improvments in your support and systems availability are way overdue and if things don't change soon you may find yourselves way over staffed due to mass exodus.

My point was you shouldn't have to worry about our internal issues as all you want is for our service to work for you. I'm not trying to make excuses or anything. Our service is what it is and you have to decide if it's working for you or not.

In the rest of the message you replied to I detailed some of the steps we are taking to improve our support response times. Again, it's up to you to decide if those steps will work for your needs or not.

We always appreciate input regarding our business.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder