Afrihost support or lack therof

[gloryboy]

To give a bit of background, I work for a company that does networking installations and support for SME's. Over the past two months we had about 15 clients complaining about our networking support and equipment we installed on premises.

All 15 of these clients were Afrihost customers, as we only supply internal networking support, not any breakout.

All the clients were complaining of slow or intermittent internet, and the fault for all of these were pointed to our equipment or network setup by the Afrihost support team.

Doing troubleshooting from our side the following was found.

Four clients had faulty telkom lines, and the ADSL portion was managed by Afrihost, not Telkom.
The rest of the clients we found fault with the Afrihost accounts themeselves.

This was mixture of shaped capped, unshaped capped and business uncapped ADSL accounts. We tried to liaise with Afrihost on behalf of the clients, but claims from Afrihost's side was that the accounts were working fine, and there was nothing that they could do.

My own experience with just trying to get a test account activated and the support replies I got regarding this showed me that the normal support channels for Afrihost are not adequate for the business they are running.

This is not a complaint that Afrihost's network is always broken, as I have no personal experience on that front.

My biggest point I am trying to make is Afrihost, please get your support sorted out, as not everyone has access to social media to try and resolve their issues. Your social media channels should not be getting you faster and better results than your main support channels. We(our company) are tired of trying to troubleshoot your faults because your support desk is not doing an adequate job of it. We have luckily made changes in our policies so this should no longer be an issue with us, but you have tied up man hours from our side to try and get your clients faults sorted for you.

Please please get your support sorted out.

 

[Kosmik]

No. no, don't you realize that they need to drop all the sub 100Gb accounts first.

 

[AfriFella]

To give a bit of background, I work for a company that does networking installations and support for SME's. Over the past two months we had about 15 clients complaining about our networking support and equipment we installed on premises.

All 15 of these clients were Afrihost customers, as we only supply internal networking support, not any breakout.

All the clients were complaining of slow or intermittent internet, and the fault for all of these were pointed to our equipment or network setup by the Afrihost support team.

Doing troubleshooting from our side the following was found.

Four clients had faulty telkom lines, and the ADSL portion was managed by Afrihost, not Telkom.
The rest of the clients we found fault with the Afrihost accounts themeselves.

This was mixture of shaped capped, unshaped capped and business uncapped ADSL accounts. We tried to liaise with Afrihost on behalf of the clients, but claims from Afrihost's side was that the accounts were working fine, and there was nothing that they could do.

My own experience with just trying to get a test account activated and the support replies I got regarding this showed me that the normal support channels for Afrihost are not adequate for the business they are running.

This is not a complaint that Afrihost's network is always broken, as I have no personal experience on that front.

My biggest point I am trying to make is Afrihost, please get your support sorted out, as not everyone has access to social media to try and resolve their issues. Your social media channels should not be getting you faster and better results than your main support channels. We(our company) are tired of trying to troubleshoot your faults because your support desk is not doing an adequate job of it. We have luckily made changes in our policies so this should no longer be an issue with us, but you have tied up man hours from our side to try and get your clients faults sorted for you.

Please please get your support sorted out.

Good afternoon, gloryboy. I'm sorry to hear about your poor experience with our Support Team and that you were compelled to write this post. ;(

It sounds like the issues you are describing here has stemmed from a wide variety of unique issues that plague each user separately. Due to this, and that each of these issues was reported to our Support Team separately and most likely each dealt with by a different consultant, I think it's unfair to compare each experience under the same blanket.

I personally think we have one of the best and most well-trained support teams out there. With that being said, a support query or a follow-up can sometimes fall through the cracks and that is one of the reasons we're here. Feel free to PM me or any of the other AfriReps if you need to expedite any support related query.

 

[gloryboy]

Good afternoon, gloryboy. I'm sorry to hear about your poor experience with our Support Team and that you were compelled to write this post. ;(

It sounds like the issues you are describing here has stemmed from a wide variety of unique issues that plague each user separately. Due to this, and that each of these issues was reported to our Support Team separately and most likely each dealt with by a different consultant, I think it's unfair to compare each experience under the same blanket.

I personally think we have one of the best and most well-trained support teams out there. With that being said, a support query or a follow-up can sometimes fall through the cracks and that is one of the reasons we're here. Feel free to PM me or any of the other AfriReps if you need to expedite any support related query.

While I do agree that each query was unique and dealt with different people, somehow in each case the wrong conclusion was reach and in almost all cases the same conclusion was reached. While I do appreciate it can be challenging dealing with issues that are not always in the ISP's control, proper troubleshooting by your'e support team would have let them to the correct fault, instead of stating that the fault is outside Afrihost's realm of responsibility.

This post was more of a rant with my personal experience with Afrihost support channels, and I can point to a host of problems that occurs in the exact same way across the board with each interaction with Afrihost. There is quite a few things that Afrihost can do to actually alleviate their support costs and make life much easier for their customers.

But in the end it is not my job to criticize or plan your business for you.

One thing I will say again, the fact that you have a social media team that can handle these type of queries is great, but it should never become better than your main channels, it should just be another way of entering them. From my own personal experience this was not the case these last 2 months.

 

[AfriFella]

While I do agree that each query was unique and dealt with different people, somehow in each case the wrong conclusion was reach and in almost all cases the same conclusion was reached. While I do appreciate it can be challenging dealing with issues that are not always in the ISP's control, proper troubleshooting by your'e support team would have let them to the correct fault, instead of stating that the fault is outside Afrihost's realm of responsibility.

This post was more of a rant with my personal experience with Afrihost support channels, and I can point to a host of problems that occurs in the exact same way across the board with each interaction with Afrihost. There is quite a few things that Afrihost can do to actually alleviate their support costs and make life much easier for their customers.

But in the end it is not my job to criticize or plan your business for you.

One thing I will say again, the fact that you have a social media team that can handle these type of queries is great, but it should never become better than your main channels, it should just be another way of entering them. From my own personal experience this was not the case these last 2 months.

I'm really sorry to hear that this has been your perception of the Team. I can assure you that in 99.9% cases, the correct lines of troubleshooting is followed by our Support Team and issues are logged and escalated using the correct channels. This is a result of an extensive training programme we put all staff through before they hit our floor.

Thanks for the kudos around our Social Media Team. Most of them have been promoted internally from the Support Floor too, which is why they're always on point with troubleshooting an issue on the spot. Feel free to keep on reaching out to Social Media or My Broadband if this is your preferred channel of communication.