Slow Support

[patrick2012]

Is WHMCS Support active anymore? I submitted a high priority ticket 8:38am EST, it is now 1:23pm EST almost 6 hours and no response.

 

This is not a complaint by any means but i'm hoping a moderator or something can ring up Matt or another support staff to hop on the tickets

[m8internet]

I got a response to my latest ticket in 18 hours

Wait longer

[patrick2012]

I got a response to my latest ticket in 18 hours

Wait longer

 

This is acceptable to you? low priority tickets, completely agree. Inability to access admin area with 3 orders waiting my approval right now for working on 8 hours now.

 

Like i said, NOT a complaint, great software, slow support. Simply surprised. 24 hours is far too long, as is 18 hours for high priority tickets. I love the software but my customers aren't as polite. This hurts my image as a business with the long waits.

 

Currently i narrowed it down to to the official WHMCS PayPal addon but i am surprised many find 24 hours acceptable for a system that truly is a businesses backbone.

 

Edit: no it's not me being banned from the admin area, an addon was causing the admin area inaccessible. (PayPal Addon - The WHMCS official one)

Edited April 18, 2012 by patrick2012
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[m8internet]

This is acceptable to you?

I didn't say whether it was or not, just how long a typical ticket response is taking at the moment

The response time at the moment is what it is

 

Compare that to my first two tickets where the response time was about 48 hours

That is a long time when your website WHMCS installation does not respond or operate as you expect, thus taking a total of about 6 days to fully resolve (48 hours, 48 hours, and 48 hours)

[patrick2012]

I didn't say whether it was or not, just how long a typical ticket response is taking at the moment

The response time at the moment is what it is

 

Compare that to my first two tickets where the response time was about 48 hours

That is a long time when your website WHMCS installation does not respond or operate as you expect, thus taking a total of about 6 days to fully resolve (48 hours, 48 hours, and 48 hours)

 

Sorry if it came off as rude. That wasn't my intention

 

48 hours is a deal breaker in some cases. I've been doing some reading and it seems everyone, and i mean everyone loves WHMCS (myself included) but #1 complaint seems to be slow support. Complaints on hostgator forums, WHT new and archived and few other smaller forums.

 

I'm sure answering a lot of tickets takes time, but i worked for a small ISP on a small team of 10 people supporting over 20,000 customers and our SLA was 8 hours.

 

I think a great move on WHMCS part would be to setup an SLA guarantee for their paid customers.

[m8internet]

I think a great move on WHMCS part would be to setup an SLA guarantee for their paid customers.

I was under the impression anyone submitting a support ticket was a paying customer (licence holder, direct or indirect)

For everyone else the forum was the best point of contact, as well as for minor configuration issues

I suspect what is happening is that support tickets are being submitted for anything and everything, and solving those involved with customised installations take the most time to investigate

[ckh]

I don't see having 24/7 support for a script and think 48 hours is reasonable and an SLA guarantee a bit of a stretch.

 

It's not a service like your internet connection or your server, it's software. Before upgrading or modifying, make a backup so you can restore it if something goes wrong, esp if it's in production. Should be common practice.

 

Having an SLA or 24/7 support is just going to hike the price up for everyone.

 

I could see them making a deal with some of their support people and charging something like $20 or $25 upfront per instance for high priority, 24/7 service with an SLA, or perhaps have it as an additional monthly support option for those that may need it.

[patrick2012]

I don't see having 24/7 support for a script and think 48 hours is reasonable and an SLA guarantee a bit of a stretch.

 

It's not a service like your internet connection or your server, it's software. Before upgrading or modifying, make a backup so you can restore it if something goes wrong, esp if it's in production. Should be common practice.

 

Having an SLA or 24/7 support is just going to hike the price up for everyone.

 

I could see them making a deal with some of their support people and charging something like $20 or $25 upfront per instance for high priority, 24/7 service with an SLA, or perhaps have it as an additional monthly support option for those that may need it.

 

I believe the general public would disagree with you.

 

A truthful example: I sell VPS, i need to manually provision 15 servers a day i require assistance. You think customers will wait 48 hours for their server happily? Especially when my primary advertisement is "Instant Activation" plastered on my site. (manual provisioning because of fraud checks etc stopping automatic setup)

 

Average $18 per lower end vps. That delay may cost me almost $300.

 

WHMCS is great like i said, but i think where you went wrong with your statement is "It's just a script"

 

Sorry to break it to you, but some of us truly depend on WHMCS as our backend billing/helpdesk. Many people have thousands invested in our business, some in the 10s of thousands. Not to mention existing client base value. WHMCS is our business. I look at it as a very powerful piece of software, not just a script.

 

And just so you know, 24\7 support isn't that hard to achieve. so many web hosts sell for under $7 per month and have 4 hour SLA's. I can list you 3 privately as i don't want to advertise for them.

 

Matt none of the above is a statement against you or your company, just a disagreement to the previous post. Apologies for coming off against WHMCS support. Simple against the idea that 48 hours is acceptable.

 

Let's assume a low end monthly leased client base WHMCS possibly has (remember i'm guessing low end 200 branded 200 unbranded leased licenses) $3,190 for branded and $3,790 unbranded = $6,980. Easily support 1 staff member at night. I believe these are low numbers, i think if many feel how i do about WHMCS it's a dominate competitor.

 

I think Matt may have a full time job and doesn't rely on this to feed his family but no, the point to what i'm saying is, there should be enough income for some dedicated support staff at least 2.

 

Lastly a product can carry the same importance as a service. Sometimes even more importance. As far as i'm concerned WHMCS is far more important to me then my internet connection at home.

[ckh]

Sure, I depend on WHMCS to manage our 50+ servers and hosting.

 

That delay was your own doing if you didn't have a plan in place in case the installation/upgrade went sour. I don't upgrade WHMCS for at least a month after a new version comes out, most of the bugs are worked out by then. I make a backup before installing/upgrading anything. If something happens that makes the installation unusable, I can get it back up and running in a short time.

 

After about 5 years of using WHMCS, I've never needed any 24/7 support.

 

I wouldn't assume to know anything about their income, expenses or profits. Providing 24/7 support would cut into their profits, though and not only do I not need 24/7 support, I don't want to pay for it with higher prices just because people don't read the instructions, make backups, or have a plan in place.

 

I'm not against 24/7 support, I just think that those that want/need it should pay for it. I can see WHMCS putting something in place to provide and charge clients that want/need that level of service, but, I for one, don't want to pay for it with higher prices and I'm guessing most of their clients would feel the same way.

[m8internet]

I don't upgrade WHMCS for at least a month after a new version comes out, most of the bugs are worked out by then

Agreed, I am still using v4.5.2 as the number of errors and issues when v5 first came out were higher than normal

I am getting near to installing v5 although it does mean some of the modifications I have made will be lost, but I can reinstate these as I work through each tempate file

Some of them may not even be appropriate and included in the latest version

[openmind]

I think Matt may have a full time job and doesn't rely on this to feed his family but no, the point to what i'm saying is, there should be enough income for some dedicated support staff at least 2.

I can assure you that Matt's full time job is WHMCS and your estimates of how many customers use the system is so low it's virtually underground

 

For the record though, I've used WHMCS since 2006 and always fought their corner when they cop flak on the forums. It does however appear that support response times are dropping and I agree that 48 hours is too long.

 

None of us though can dictate to another how many support staff there should be nor what times they should work, it's down to the company to decide that. If customers vote with their feet (which I sincerely hope doesn't happen) then there is a problem...

[m8internet]

I can assure you that Matt's full time job is WHMCS and your estimates of how many customers use the system is so low it's virtually underground

Agreed, a Limited company plus is VAT registered, so must be doing quite well

I know they advertised for another UK employee recently

I was tempted, but don't yet have enough background experience in WHMCS

However, I have now fixed and installed coming up for about 100 third party installations this year so far

 

I personally like WHMCS in its core format, but as soon as you start customising the code this is where lots of time is lost in trying to check and ensure there aren't any conflicts

The most common issue I have found it javascript that duplicates and nulls out one or other of the scripts

Edited April 19, 2012 by m8internet

[openmind]

<pedant>

You can be a limited company and VAT registered but not make any money so the presence of those facts doesn't give an indication of how well a company is doing. A better indication is to download the accounts for a limited company through companies house.

</pedant>

 

But to be honest this is all fairly pointless as only Matt and his team can make the changes they feel may be required...

[Matt]

I'd like to clear up a number of incorrect points and misconceptions that have been made here.

 

Firstly, patrick got a response to his ticket within 9 hours of it being opened, far less than 48 hours, and not even close to 24.

 

Secondly in response to m8internet, the response time you get for one particular ticket is not necessarily typical so you can't say that.

 

There really is no typical response time. It all depends what kind of query it is. If you ask for a license reissue you'll typically get a response within 30 minutes, at any time of the day, or how to carry out a certain action, or query on how something works, you'll typically get a response within 4-8 hours, but if you ask for debugging of an issue that has never been reported before, or report an error or bug, it's always going to take longer as (a) it requires time to actually investigate and (b) it often requires a more senior person to investigate, so it's not something that can just be answered as soon as it's read. However response times of more than 24 hours are still very rare, and certainly not what we consider to be acceptable.

 

And just to clarify, we do have people online monitoring the support desk 24x7, and our support team currently stands at 12 people, who handled an average of 483 ticket replies every day of the month last month. Which is no easy task with the types of questions we get, that's for sure!

 

However, that's not to say things are perfect. We know the response times to the more complex issues that require debugging could be better, and we are working on that, including the setup of an actual central office and taking on of more staff. And based on feedback from the recent survey, we are also considering the possibility of implementing some higher priority paid support options in future.

 

Matt

[Anubianhost]

Matt,

 

I took a leap of faith just recently joining WHMCS. I came from ClientExec and WHMCS seemed like a better fit. It had the options I wanted and the price was right!

 

It was a smooth transition and I used the importer that was provided but a couple things it didn't catch I had to do manually. I went to the forums first to find a How-To and couldn't find an answer. So I posted in the tech support section. It said a moderator would have to approve it. It never and to this day has still not shown up.

 

After a couple days I decided to put in a ticket to get help with my questions and I put in a standard support ticket on 04/12/2012 @ 14:12 It was not answered by anyone on staff until 04/16/2012 09:37

 

Mine was not that big of an issue and I did get the matter resolved by the way of another forum but I just wanted to make it known to you as well of the time it took to even get a reply. My results I'm sure are not typical but also keep in mind this was my very first ticket and first impressions mean a lot.

 

I appreciate everything you guys do. I love WHMCS and the functionality it provides

[patrick2012]

I'd like to clear up a number of incorrect points and misconceptions that have been made here.

 

Firstly, patrick got a response to his ticket within 9 hours of it being opened, far less than 48 hours, and not even close to 24.

 

Secondly in response to m8internet, the response time you get for one particular ticket is not necessarily typical so you can't say that.

 

There really is no typical response time. It all depends what kind of query it is. If you ask for a license reissue you'll typically get a response within 30 minutes, at any time of the day, or how to carry out a certain action, or query on how something works, you'll typically get a response within 4-8 hours, but if you ask for debugging of an issue that has never been reported before, or report an error or bug, it's always going to take longer as (a) it requires time to actually investigate and (b) it often requires a more senior person to investigate, so it's not something that can just be answered as soon as it's read. However response times of more than 24 hours are still very rare, and certainly not what we consider to be acceptable.

 

And just to clarify, we do have people online monitoring the support desk 24x7, and our support team currently stands at 12 people, who handled an average of 483 ticket replies every day of the month last month. Which is no easy task with the types of questions we get, that's for sure!

 

However, that's not to say things are perfect. We know the response times to the more complex issues that require debugging could be better, and we are working on that, including the setup of an actual central office and taking on of more staff. And based on feedback from the recent survey, we are also considering the possibility of implementing some higher priority paid support options in future.

 

Matt

 

Considering the OP, it was intended as a friendly nudge but some members tend to take it personally for some reason and show fanboy tendencies which are unnecessary. I was simply hoping someone like John or Bear may see it and give you a ring.

 

I know people don't live on the support desk 24x7 without looking away from the screen here and there... speaking from personal expirence, it happens. Just a friendly nudge.

 

These forums tend to be pretty hostile when it comes to any feedback, even to the guys who post constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is good for business, helps you build, not everything is negative.

 

remain humble about a great product and that's it.

[GoofyFrog]

Believe you me, compared to the other Billing software (mentioning no names, cough HB!) support at WHMCS is actually pretty decent.

[panacheweb]

I agree that support can at times be slow.. however as Matt stated, many of the questions and queries we ask are not just simple questions..

 

saying that there should be a sales team that deals with sales and licensing issues, and a support team that deals with the support... which I'm sure there is..

 

with any support option you can do one of two things.. Keep your support in house and trained properly, or out source and turn your company into a disaster..

 

When my web hosting company was using outsourced support it was absolutely horrible, but since they went to in house support, things have gotten much better..

 

faster support does not make it better..

[patrick2012]

I agree that support can at times be slow.. however as Matt stated, many of the questions and queries we ask are not just simple questions..

 

saying that there should be a sales team that deals with sales and licensing issues, and a support team that deals with the support... which I'm sure there is..

 

with any support option you can do one of two things.. Keep your support in house and trained properly, or out source and turn your company into a disaster..

 

When my web hosting company was using outsourced support it was absolutely horrible, but since they went to in house support, things have gotten much better..

 

faster support does not make it better..

 

I have to correct you one one major, major flaw in what you said. Support can NEVER be fast enough. Fast support is ALWAYS better. That said, outsourcing support is something a few million dollar company does out of greed. They do this to save a few $$ at the sacrifice of quality. Not WHMCS. It would be a death sentence for them.

 

No matter the case, faster support is always a goal everyone aims for (Client & Business)

[bear]

Fast support is ALWAYS better.

Though it's nice to have quick responses, more times than not a quick response is not the right response. It can be, and from WHMCS it usually is, but not always.

faster support is always a goal everyone aims for (Client & Business)

If it's also good support, yes. I once used a well known inexpensive server management company for a while, and they had a "quick response" guarantee. The first response was quick, but pointless, usually "we'll have a look". The next response didn't have to come before 23 hours and 59 more minutes later, and often came rather close.

They once left my server fully borked after a mysql upgrade they did, claiming they'd "spent enough time on the issue already". Fixed it myself, fired them shortly after.

Quick is not always good, nor is cheap.

[easyhosting]

its always better to look at the support question carefully and then give a correct consise reply/solution rather than a quick half cocked reply that is useless to the issue.

 

Yes send a "we have your question and are looking into the issue" reply so the client does not feel ignored and if needed just update the question with " this is a complex issue and we are still looking into this"

[00Dante]

WHMCS support is great. Especially since most of the problems people have are their own fault.

Seeing as they usually go above an beyond the call of duty, it's reasonable that you don't get an instant answer.

[VicToMeyeZR]

My only feedback on this issue, is; at times their support is horribly slow. I think everyone can agree that is TRUE.

 

WHMCS charges for support? Do they not? So if you are going to charge for support, then you need to provide it. Using excuses like "we are so much more busy when we release a major update" that 48hrs+ is acceptable? It should not be. If you are charging for a service, then you need to provide the service, and in a timely manner, regardless of "when" it is..

[ckh]

For $45/year for support and updates, I don't expect 24/7 support and am quite happy with a response within 48 hours Monday - Friday.

 

I can't recall an instance where it took longer than 12 hours to receive a response, I guess that's because I don't update immediately when a new release comes out, I wait for things to settle down and the minor updates come out, at least a month after the release. I also make a full backup beforehand so if something critical does happen, I can just restore the backup and be operational again.

 

Within 48 hours on weekdays is just fine with me.

[patrick2012]

For $45/year for support and updates, I don't expect 24/7 support and am quite happy with a response within 48 hours Monday - Friday.

 

I can't recall an instance where it took longer than 12 hours to receive a response, I guess that's because I don't update immediately when a new release comes out, I wait for things to settle down and the minor updates come out, at least a month after the release. I also make a full backup beforehand so if something critical does happen, I can just restore the backup and be operational again.

 

Within 48 hours on weekdays is just fine with me.

 

 

No one asked, implied or demanded 24\7.

 

The attitude from some around here is silly. 48 hours is a very long time for a successful business to go without their paid for, premium support when it comes to billing software issues. Now normally billing software (retail) this isn't an issue as it's not the backbone to your business.

 

WHMCS becomes the backbone as it runs the show and when the backbone to your system becomes inaccessible it's an issue. Too much ignorance around here when others tend to assume it's an upgrade issue and how they are "smart" to wait it out before upgrading". Who cares? If you pride yourself of WHMCS so much, then you should trust their beta testing and their willingness to release a version publicly.

 

Don't go blaming WHMCS customers for this. If it's good enough for WHMCS to release, it's good enough to use. Otherwise don't release it. Theres ZERO excuse to blame a customer for jumping on it too early. We invest in to the software, quiet literally if we purchase an owned license. We put our trust in it's brand.

 

 

 

Now lets not get too confused with this argument about 48 hours + WHMCS. This is simply an debate about a 48 hour wait, not a 48 hour wait with WHMCS since i've never waited that long.

 

Now if you want to argue that a larger business should not be using WHMCS if they want to have a support SLA then i also think that is wrong. WHMCS should also be catering to the larger business crowd. Problem i find is when people become too complacent with "acceptable" extended response times then the staff of the software start to feed from that and no reason to improve this.

 

Lets not forget the big picture here people, we are debating here for the best interest of OUR OWN customers, at least that's what's important to me. My customers rely on me ensuring i have my own software running as it should and don't care too much that i cannot login to answer ongoing tickets.

 

00Dante - WHMCS support is great. Especially since most of the problems people have are their own fault.

Seeing as they usually go above an beyond the call of duty, it's reasonable that you don't get an instant answer.

 

It is not and never will be above and beyond the call of duty to support a paid for product. It is above and beyond if they support it after your support renewal expires on an owned license. Still helping is above and beyond and consider yourself lucky for extending a helping hand.

 

This software (leased) for what it does is not cheap. Owned licenses i find very cheap if not too cheap and It could and should be selling owned at double the cost. Yes monthly is on par with the competition but the competition is scarce. In comparison with out well known software, WHMCS has great features.

 

I've said it before, i'll say it again, no one will touch the admin area with WHMCS. They have this so pretty and nice i don't think anyone will compete with this. Unfortunately client area needs to look the same way. (Not like the admin, but designed smart, innovative, nice GUI with nice integration for modules.

 

Now to compare to competition without naming names.

 

WHMCS Admin area - A win hands down. Take awhile for someone to beat it

 

WHMCS Plugins - Lots but they simply don't look great on the client area interface.

SolusVM for example. though Solus designed it (i think) it looks like garbage on WHMCS. On 2 others you have to see for yourself to believe it.

 

WHMCS development - Honestly it feels stable and i'm comfortable knowing they take WHMCS seriously. Stability is important.

 

WHMCS client area - Biggest bummer. It may work for some but it's not the greatest by a long shot. I find even the most recent v5 dated.

 

WHMCS order templates - Lacking big time. Though there are a few, two other billing software alternatives have beautiful order pages.

 

WHMCS Live Chat - Though it costs extra they now do 1 month which i was surprised to see. This software and at least from screenshots of the latest update for it is amazingly nice. Well done Matt and Developers.

 

Over all, i browsed the competition yesterday and though one is out of their mind with the pricing they want per month (l actually laughed out loud when he tried selling me) they are all pretty advanced client areas and order pages. Aside from things like phpcoin (no free software comparisons). There is one other who has been around longer than WHMCS i believe but he is a 1 man team.

 

--

 

Anyhow i wrote this in hopes as another year slowly creeps to a close the development team will look closely in to what, where, how and when things should change for WHMCS. I could care less who things 72 hours is good enough for them. That just means you don't mind having your own customers wait this long and that is an unacceptable way to run your business.

 

You should always be fighting for better, not simply being complacent with what you're provided.