No way are we going to tell you a secret about how to put your hosting business on an AutoPilot and still generate hundreds of new sales. The truth is that the more time you spend on hosting related tasks, the more you'll learn about the industry and customer demands. You'll learn how to differentiate your offers from the rest, and that not merely on the grids of price and web space.

But running a hosting business doesn't mean you've to be sitting in a data center all the time. And with a reseller plan or a few dedicated servers, no one will actually allow you to do that. Now keep it under your hat, but many tasks including the support part can be outsourced without too much of trouble.

In fact, for resellers just starting out a hosting venture, outsourcing is recommended. Because unless you are yourself an expert at hosting matters, any request for technical support from a customer will lead you to contact your actual host and ask for an answer or guideline. Now this back and forth communication will result in increasing the time required for the resolution of the problem. And just imagine the scenario when you start from a request that was sent a few hours back. By the time you start resolving the issue, you have already lost one angry customer.

The outsourcing of hosting support is not new. Companies have been practicing this for a few years now and the actual service providers have also matured with the passage of time. Ready to be deployed tools such as helpdesk software, live chat platforms etc are available that let your customers interact directly with your outsourced staff, however under the impression that they are communicating to full-time staff employed at your official address.

Not only is the service transparent to your customers, but you also gain a complete picture of what is going on. Any ticket logged in the helpdesk can be viewed and investigated by you and so is the case with any live chat conversed between the prospect/customer and outsourced staff. The good outsourced support providers understand that it is only in the best interest of their own to treat your customers with as much of importance as possible.

It doesn't take more than 30 minutes for your customers to hear back from the support staff. Either with a resolution or with the right set of investigation queries that lead to it.

Stay tuned as we cover the "how-to" part.