Last month, cPanel, maker of the industry’s leading web hosting control panel, announced that it would be making significant improvements to its technical support system. According to the late November announcement, the company has expanded support in three critical ways:
1. Making a new live chat feature available on the company website: www.cpanel.net
2. Revamping its online discussion forums and dispatching technical support experts to monitor them on a full-time basis.
3. Providing technical support 24/7 via phone.
Once upon a time, cPanel’s main outlet for technical support was its web-based ticket system. While efficient for the most part, this system was only available to customers during daytime business hours. As we all know, technical problems have no schedule and tend to arise at the most untimeliest of moments. That has all changed now as cPanel’s tremendous growth has forced the company to make drastic improvements in the support area.
Sean Richards, Technical Support Manager at cPanel, explained that because the software provider’s client base is growing so fast, expanding the technical support team only makes sense. He hinted that it is the only way to provide its customers with the around the clock assistance they deserve. Customers have also benefited from the increased size of cPanel’s technical support team. Richards said that by adding a number of talented technical experts and seasoned veterans, expanding support for migrations, bug review, and direct API issues has been much easier. He noted that enhanced support in many other keys will be critical for the upcoming year of 2010.
As we noted earlier, cPanel has also added live chat to its support system, a feature that can be accessed directly from the company website. This new feature allows any existing customers or prospects to reach the customer service team directly from their web browser. The staff provides immediate responds to matters concerning billing and sales questions in near real-time. The cPanel live chat feature is available during normal daytime business hours.
The online discussion forums have always been one of cPanel’s most popular support outlets. Even this channel has received a major overhaul. Richards commented that customers looking for help will find the layout of the new support forum far more useful. Among the enhancements is a designated area for users who would like to make feature requests, as well as improved access for mobile devices. According to Richards, PDA and smart phone users can experience these enhancements from their mobile devices by visiting the cpanel forum at http://m.forums.cpanel.net. In addition, an expert from the cPanel support team is now assigned to forums to address customer questions and concerns. cPanel is hoping this will help the community by speeding up the response time on technical issues.
While cPanel has made improvements, its around the clock support system is still not without flaw. The price for telephone support is based on a nominal fee per incident. Fortunately, this fee covers however many calls it takes to resolve the problem at hand.
