The best option for the customer is for the livehelp support to be knowledgeable enough to guide the customer what should be the next step and if possible provide general troubleshooting. Sometimes creating a ticket is a waste of time for both the customer and the host. Phone support is good when you need to guide the customer and provide training but waste of time if someone needs to wait while tech support is either submitting a ticket or troubleshooting (which still may result in a trouble ticket).

It depends on the support you require. Many sales questions can be answered over a live chat system, also support could be managed over a ticket system. With support, sending many emails, support tickets, for a more complex situation could take a long time, alternatively with phone support you could ask all questions in one go. It really depends on the answers you get back from your host and if more detail is required.

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both have their advantages and disadvantages and both are important

Hello. I think that phone support has less possibilities. With online support you can to serve a few customers at the same time.

There's usually so many different responses to threads like this. With the vast amount of people with different personal preferences, along with the number of different types of support avenues offered. Personally I believe each host is different and should be. Each host should look at their own clients and clients niche. Usually new people and business grade clients prefer phone support and/or a ticket system, where others prefer email. Then there's the ones that prefer IM's/VoIP and or live chat. A host doesn't need to offer every different type of support, but should offer at least a few different ones. And yes, as also mentioned earlier a good knowledge base is always good. We've been through and tried just about every different type of support channel available over the years and for us it seems like email and our ticket support is used the most. We get few support calls on our toll free number. We'll always keep our toll free number but we got rid of our live chat. With live chat we either got idiots contacting us for no reason or people just checking to see if we were really online. However, another host will have different experiences.

I think that there is no difference. It depends on hosting copany, the policy and the support knowledge. I these rules are followed carefully, then you will receive all the necessary help not depending on the way.

Customers like phone support but it is more appropriate to offer support via chat or email as it allows you more time to look on the answer without having to talk every few seconds on the phone.

Phone support is great when compared to live support ticket which is not instant

I think the consumer would prefer phone support. It gives them that instant gratification. But a ticket system is preferrable to the hosting provider because they have a tracking system and can better delegate the support function

I don't think everyone would like phone support over chat or email. Everyone is used to their own preferences. For me, I love to click the live chat button before sending an email or picking up the phone. So I guess it about understanding your customers, and allocating your resources differently to different channels of communication.

Let's say you have X=100 customers. Offer them all options (we offer live chat, email support both integrated in http://www.liveperson.com ) and trial over a period of time will tell you the best channel that satisfies majority of your customers.

Call me old-fashioned but I prefer good, prompt phone support. I have to say that as much as companies like GoDaddy take flak for a lot of service-related issues they always are right there on the phone and ready to help. After frustrating phone relationships with most other businesses (phone companies, banks, etc...) it's nice to have good phone customer service for web hosting ...

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