Best advice I can give to fellow GSP's 80/20 rule

[Daersun]

All GSPs need to understand the 80/20 rule, you will spend 80% of your time on 20% of the results and 20% of your time produces 80% of the results. 20% of your customers will cause 80% of the problems. Learn to focus your 80% of the time on the important stuff.

 

I have seen alot of posts about stupid customers etc, let me show you how FragnServers.com handles the 20%.

8020.pdf

[ChrisOlver]

Hi,

 

Nice support ticket. Good to see it came to a nice resolution for the user without the little child screaming his head off but don't you find your refund policy gets abused by the user?

 

In that ticket, from what I quickly passed my eye over it seemed it was something on the users ISP which was causing the problems and not your self. Don't personally see why you should be giving him the refund when its nothing to do with your service which is lacking or causing him problems. If you do have a refund policy then its good to see that its withheld.

 

Ok if your trying to say that to get rid of that 20% user quickly and easily is to give him a refund then I dont think thats the best route imho. Would rather try to keep the customer and make an effort to retain him then send him on his way. Ok yes your a larger company than myself and yes it would depend on how much the user is paying (ie. i would most likley make alot more effort to keep a ?50 customer than a ?1.50 voice customer) but even so I would more inclineded to keep the customer than lose him. Just my point of view

[Daersun]

Hi,

 

Nice support ticket. Good to see it came to a nice resolution for the user without the little child screaming his head off but don't you find your refund policy gets abused by the user?

 

My refund policy is not posted anywhere. Its an internal policy. My customers WANT to have servers from us. If they are not happy with their servers, they will not renew so what good is it having them in the first place. All they do is just leave unhappy and then you get posts in the forums XXX sucks!!!

 

In that ticket, from what I quickly passed my eye over it seemed it was something on the users ISP which was causing the problems and not your self. Don't personally see why you should be giving him the refund when its nothing to do with your service which is lacking or causing him problems.

We give him the refund because he was obviously not the sharpest tool in the box. I could have spent over an hour explaining it wasnt us, but what does it matter. It doesn't change the fact that he was unhappy with the quality he was experiencing.

 

Ok if your trying to say that to get rid of that 20% user quickly and easily is to give him a refund then I dont think thats the best route imho. Would rather try to keep the customer and make an effort to retain him then send him on his way.

Lets say I kept him as a customer, which I could have easily done. Its obvious he will not be happy. If a one time ping spike to 45 makes him unhappy - ping issues happen outside of our networks all the time, he will consistently be opening tickets and blaming us for the issues. Then at the end of the month, he leaves with a bad taste in his mouth. Now hes going to go try a couple other companies and find one - put in lots of support tickets, leave upset and keep moving on.

 

Instead I have managed to keep my support staff clear from the issue and we can focus on issues that are OUR fault. There is a huge difference between a customer who is not going to be happy and a customer who is uninformed, based on his ticket, I knew which one this customer was

 

Ok yes your a larger company than myself and yes it would depend on how much the user is paying (ie. i would most likely make alot more effort to keep a ?50 customer than a ?1.50 voice customer) but even so I would more inclineded to keep the customer than lose him. Just my point of view

 

This is where I really disagree. We provide the same level of support to all of our customers and treat them the same way.That being said, I have customers paying over 200 a month each. I would jump though hoops to keep them around

[HIS-MOTHER]

I agree Daersun, Our policy is similar in that we don't give refunds but we do have in our FAQ somewhere about a case by case basis. Yuo can't please rthem all the time and most are not savvy on internet routing issues. My opinion is that it was handled professionally and he will probably treturn for future services regardless of a what 45ms ping spike? Holy crap 22.22 updates per second BATMAN. How much more do ya want? LOL

 

Besides we all know ingame ping code depending on the title is HORRID!

[[NiK]Jay]

We are similar, but the only reason we dont give a refund is when someone buys a server, but decides they dont want a gameserver in general, not that theres high pings or anything, i had a customer wanting a refund because he decided against a server, i said we dont offer refunds unless theres a problem with the server or network, and he compeltly understood, thanked me for the work and support and havent heard since.

 

I agree to offering great customer support, i do the same, ive spent hours and hours on end for my customers with the simplest problem that most GSP's would say "we dont support that kind of stuff".

 

I believe theres a limit to put on giving refunds, you can only go so far in all fairness, otherwise i would have clans renting servers for a match, knowing they can get a refund after.

 

Anyone do the same....?