SUPPORT

Your Support Team

At Hostcomm we are committed to providing you with the highest standards of technical support.

• When you call to in our Helpdesk, you will always talk to an engineer 

There is no first line handlers to deal with. You speak to someone you can solve your problem from the beginning. 

• It is easy to get in touch with us

You can contact us by phone, email or via a support ticket from your My Account area.

• You will get unlimited support from our Technical team

We don't ration the support we give. We aim to continue to support you whenever you need it.

• All our support is UK based

Your query is dealt with in-house there are no hand offs to a third party.

• Our engineers are all highly capable

Each member of the team has a minimum of 18 months training and will be able to resolve most support issues.

• Problem ownership

Where a problem is very urgent or complex, we have a Problem Resolution process, which forms a part of our Service Level Agreement.

• Low wait time

You will usually be able to get straight through to an engineer. We offer support from 8 am to 8.30 pm.

Account Manager support

Your Account Manager is an important part of your support team. In addition to helping you design and set up your services, they are also here to help with many tips to help you to improve the effectiveness of your services. They can also answer many of the more straightforward support questions and getting the problem sorted as quickly, to ensure that your business continues to work effectively. 

Service Only Contracts

Do you need specialist support for your hosted contact centre?

Keeping a hosted contact centre working effectively will sometimes require support from technical specialists.

If you operate your contact centre using the VICIdial dialler platform, why not take advantage of the full support of Hostcomm’s team of Technical engineers. You will be provided with the same level of support as our full service clients, including unlimited phone technical support. Our team is there to keep your contact centre on the road.

For high quality technical support at an affordable cost, sign up for a service contract with us. There is no sign up fee and there is no minimum contract term. The cost for the service is calculated based on the number of agents in your contact centre.

Here are some examples of the cost based on different contact centre size:

Contact us to get a quote based on your contact centre size.

Hostcomm Helpdesk

The Hostcomm Helpdesk is your main point of contact when you need support for any of your services. Here, we can deal with your calls, emails or web chat enquiries.

Any problems or issues can also be logged with Hostcomm using your secure support account on our website. Our web-based ticketing system also includes an automatic problem resolution and escalation procedure which is completely visible to our customers.

Support Services

• Helpdesk telephone tech support
• 24 x 7 remote monitoring
• Web-based interactive tech assistance
• Online reporting of outages and progress to resolution
• Online engineer support
• Hardware replacement & configuration help
• Campaign planning support
• Initial and ongoing training

Hostcomm Knowledgebase

We also provide a comprehensive knowledgebase of useful documentation and video guides to help you through the process of setting up and operating your service. In addition, we also offer documents to help our Reseller partners to support their own customers. 

Problem resolution and escalation

Hostcomm has a problem resolution and escalation plan with procedures in place to help deal with any unresolved issues.

The plan is triggered when a resolution ticket reaches a certain threshold and the issue is still not resolved. Your account manager will be informed of every escalation and will take responsibility to personally oversee the case until the problem is fixed - evaluating your situation, facilitating the issue at a global level, and acting as an advocate on your behalf.

Our escalation procedure is as follows:

1. Mean Time to Respond: You should receive a Hostcomm engineer response within 15 minutes of logging a ticket via the client portal, phone or email. If you don't receive a response within 15 minutes, you should contact your account manager.
2. Mean Time to Isolate: The mean time to replicate and isolate the issue is 1 hour. If this doesn't happen within that time, the issue will be escalated to the Technical Support Manager.
3. Mean Time to Repair: If the issue isn't fixed within 2 hours, it will be escalated to a Hostcomm Director.

Service Level Agreement

Hostcomm provides a service level agreement (SLA) that records a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees, and warranties.

Each area of service already has the "level of service" predefined. The SLA will specify the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or any other attributes of the service, such as billing. It's important to note that the "agreement" relates to the services the customer receives, and not how the service provider delivers that service.

Hostcomm's SLAs include a definition of services, performance measurement, problem management, customer duties, warranties, disaster recovery, and termination of the agreement. In order to ensure that SLAs are consistently met, these agreements are often designed with specific lines of demarcation and the parties involved are required to meet regularly to create an open forum for communication.

Hostcomm’s network infrastructure is largely based on Cisco Systems equipment. Cisco is the global market leader in IP communications and Hostcomm is an accredited partner. This allows us to design, supply and support any solution based on their products. The in-house experience in networking and IP telephony ensures that we can offer a service where standards are consistently upheld.

Network Security and Performance

The Network Operations Centre (NOC) is located in Leicester and is where your technical support team is based and new recruits are trained.

The NOC has a fibre leased line which is used to access all of our servers spread over four main data centres in the UK and Europe. Using our network monitoring applications, any downtime can be kept to a minimum. The server health information, that relates to our infrastructure and client-dedicated servers, can be monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The NOC also has a data centre which is currently undergoing an upgrade to allow Hostcomm to host some services in-house.

Service Monitoring

Hostcomm continually monitors its support services for any areas of weakness so they can be addressed quickly. Hostcomm doesn't lock clients into lengthy contracts but has a policy of encouraging loyalty through good service. On this basis, our service must be exceptional.

Logged ticket statistics are analysed every three months for average response times and satisfaction scores. Any areas that fall below our standards can be looked into andquickly improved.

Data Back-ups

Call centres are required by Ofcom to keep call recordings for at least six months. And, as part of our service to clients, Hostcomm offer secure contact data and call recording storage and back-ups as standard.

All of our hosted call centre services data is stored in a secure MySQL database on your dedicated server platform. This includes all uploaded lists, call records, campaign settings, call-back details, client details and notes.

To reduce the risk of data loss, through server disk drive failure on your hosted dialler or call centre service, Hostcomm has several backup options.

But, we know that one size doesn't fit all. So we offer five configurable backup options with all our services upon request, including free configurable backup protection.

Backup options

To reduce the chance of any data loss, simply tell us which of these backup services you require:

1. Periodically request a MySQL backup and call recordings archive from Hostcomm technical support 
2. Request read-only access to your MySQL database where you can download your data to a schedule or manually. This needs to be done when your server is not in use.
3. Download key data from the admin interface such as lists, callbacks and client data. Call recordings can be automatically transferred overnight to a server local to you. If the MySQL database is kept to a small size (by archiving call details), this can also be transferred overnight to you.