Casual Articles - Internet and Businesses Online

Opening A Dollar Store - Location Traffic and Access Matters
Are you opening a dollar store? If so location is the single most important decision that you will make prior to opening that store. Invest the time, energy and money to really examine all of the location options before making a final decision. Part of that examination includes traffic counts, access and parking.Traffic count includes foot traffic, automobile traffic and public transportation traffic if they have immediate access to your store. This traffic represents potential shoppers at your store. After opening a dollar store these are the people that you hope will become regular shoppers. The higher the traffic count the more potential sales that you will have if other conditions exist. (For example for public transportation to have any impact on your business there needs to be a transit stop with easy access to your store very close to the store entrance.)Access is critical. If you are landlocked next to a freeway with the next exit being two-miles away that traffic is not going to be of much help to you. However if you are next to a major city street with an exit directly in front of your store and easy return to the street there will be the potential for a positive impact. Traffic count for that street is important if you are opening a dollar store.Parking is important if you have many auto driving customers. Most dollar store customers are in and out very quickly. They do not wish to walk blocks to find a place to park. However having several parking spaces directly in front of your store is right for these shoppers.Consider the examination of your potential location options as one of the most critical steps toward business success. Patiently and thoroughly examine all aspects of the location including traffic, access and parking when comparing prospective locations. Be sure that you have made the right decision before opening a dollar store.To Your Dollar Store Success!

that we are offering. In this case, say, if you are a host who offers Cpanel hosting on Red hat Enterprise Linux servers, the technical support staff that works for you should be having extensive knowledge in the following areas:

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Responsibility of your support team is another important aspect. There is a lot of difference between a person who has undergone years of dedicated computer study in school and college doing this job, and a teenager with some computer background doing it part-time. The support team should be responsible in addressing various heterogeneous issues, and should also be good with the decision making related to the smooth functioning of the servers.

Say, one of your servers is having an issue with the apache server software running in the server being not compatible with PHP, as a result of a latest control panel upgrade. Your support team must not only be able to fix the immediate requests from customers hosted in this server, but should also be taking the necessary steps to identify the root cause of the issue, implement it in the server under question, and also check the rest of the servers (if any) for similar compatibility issues, and get them fixed, so that no unnecessary botherations are avoided for both the party – the customer and the support rep.

To sum up things, the support techs should not be just people to see off the day to day issues of the end customer, but they should be responsible so as to ensure that the server is fine tuned to see off any vulnerability associated with it, so that no issues arise from within the server as a result of an exploitation of that.

Using Research to Keep Your Internet Marketing Business Competitive
Success rarely comes automatically to an internet business. It is still the result of hard work and careful planning. And planning requires research. Part of what makes an internet marketing venture profitable is a well-thought-out strategy of how to attract clients and promote the product effectively. Otherwise, the business could end up floating without direction in the wide expanse of the web.Research is key to a successful internet marketing business, but like any other marketing tool, it is only effective if used well. Here's how:Know your marketGoing into internet marketing blind is like trying to pop balloons with darts in the dark. You might hit some and feel lucky, but probability very rarely favors the players. Just go to Las Vegas any day and you'll see why casinos still stand.Since almost anything can be sold online nowadays, going in without knowing who to sell to is a waste of time and effort. Do some research on what internet surfers like, what kind of sites they are attracted to and most importantly, what kind of stuff they actually buy. Positioning your product or service using this information can do wonders for your revenue.Know your competitor.Internet marketing is much like traditional marketing, in that you also need to know how and what your product stands against. It's easy to be carried away by the promise that internet marketing is for everyone and marketers can just ignore their environment. This is a fatal mistake.If your product has to stand out, you will need to do research on what makes it different from everything else. And that involves a little sleuthing on your part. Get to know your competitors, their products and their market. Find out how they promote and sell, how much traffic they get and why and then use this information to better tailor your product and keep it at par or better, a cut above the rest.Keep the traffic in your directionIf you know what makes surfers tick, you can take a look at your site and your promotion tools and see if what you're doing currently is right or a total waste of time. You might need to do a little site tweaking, add freebies like shareware and ebooks and revamp your marketing concept to come up with a site and product that people actually want to check out and buy.To do this, you will have to make yourself visible on the net. Use articles and provide links to your sit

Hosting Support – An Introduction

Imagine yourself as a person running a small-medium sized online store that concentrates on affordably prized gift items, and say, it's Christmas time. Everybody is on a shopping spree, and you have been waiting for this vacation to arrive, as it is the time of the year when your business really blooms, and with which revenues you have got to plan for the year to come.

Say your site goes down due to some sort of problems associated with your server on say, the 23rd of December, or on Christmas eve. You will be contacting your hosting company in frenzy, and just imagine if there's nobody there to provide you with prompt support and resolution for your issue. By the time boxing day arrives, nobody will need to send gifts anymore to anyone. You have lost your business, and now your site and business has got a notorious reputation of not being active when it counts.

The above is just a worse case scenario explained to put forward a point. Quality support is the backbone of a hosting company. It is the pillar on which a hosting firm rests it's credibility. Speedy and accurate customer service is rare and indicates a superior overall hosting service. When choosing a web host, what customers generally look for are Server performance, Space, Traffic allowed, Features, Cost, and most importantly Customer support.

If a hosting company is one which takes it's business seriously, their technical support must be perfect by all means. Determining whether technical support is dependable is important, because if anything goes wrong with your site, you are going to be contacting your know-it-all customer care rep. However, in the real world, we know that knowledgeable customer care is hard to find.

Most of the hosting companies claim that they have techs working round the clock in their organizations, managing their state-of-the art systems. While this in fact may be true, sometimes, the people working with the support might be the most unprofessional and underqualified ones. Due to the huge demand for information technology professionals today, many web hosts are not able to find employees who are well trained in OS concepts, network technology and control panel specifications. Other firms pump in a lot of money to advertising and marketing and gives good quality customer support only the lowest priority. In both instances, it is the customers who eventually suffers due to the lack of competence in handling their issues related to hosting.

The following is a small article gives a brief insight into the hosting support considerations for the newbies in business, as well as any host who have got high regards for the quality standards of their company. Before proceeding, please keep in mind the fact that Web Hosting Support is not child's play. It is something that is NOT to be taken for granted.

Finding the Right Support for you

Finding the perfect support for your company is not a very easy task. Every webhost who have got serious thoughts about their hosting support would be having certain expectation levels regarding the quality of support. Only if your support matches / outperforms your expectations would you feel relaxed, relieved and be happy with them.

The very first concern regarding support is how to keep things going 24 / 7. Every webhost provides their customers with a 24 / 7 support promise, and some even give their customers a money back guarantee on any failure to keep up the promise. You should be implementing methods to ensure that your support team covers the 24 hours of the day effectively, and co-ordinate between them regarding the technical and administrative aspects of your servers.

Then comes the cost part. There are options for maintaining an inhouse team of technical experts, or outsourcing to an outsourced hosting support company. You should choose your support wisely with efficient computations of your expenditure and profit margin. You should do it in such a way that the quality of support is not compromised, and at the same time you have the decent profit to enhance your business in the long run. Please note that in the very beginning itself, you should set the standards, and should never go below them. Remember – It's a jungle out there, with huge competition. If you have to survive, you have to be the best; and to be the best, you have got to give your customers the best. Manage high standards.... returns would come automatically.

Web hosting support not only means providing technical solutions to your end customers; but the sales / billing support and timely administration of your servers are equally important. You can manage the sales / billing issues yourself, or you can avail the aid of a graduate with good customer skills, and excellent knowledge on the packages / features / options that you provides. Regarding the server administration, you require the service of a good system administrator to perform the timely software upgrades, and the other fine tuning aspects of the server for it's smooth functioning. It is always an additional advantage to maintain a team of technical experts who can perform your technical support as well as server administration; rather than having separate teams for the same. It would reduce the overall costs involved, and will enhance quality of customer support due to the better knowledge of the servers.

In-House or Outsourced??

Now comes the big question. Do you need an in-house team of technicians, or do you want to outsource your support to a support company? There has been disputes over this on most of the web hosting forums. Both the options has got advantages and disadvantages. But on tallying with the positive and negative sides of both of them, my vote goes to outsourced support. A comparison of the advantages is provided in the chart below:

ADVANTAGES

---------------

In-House

1) Direct interaction with the support staff in person

2) Direct recruitment of the support staff yourself, so as to meet your ideal requirements on first-hand

3) Local market knowledge and expertise when it comes to sales and marketing

4) Ready availability-upon-call of your in house team in case of any emergency

Outsourced

1) Far cheaper than what is required to maintain an inhouse support team

2) You can concentrate on your business marketing, while the outsource company takes care of the technical side.

3) Expertise in specific fields related to every server software.

4) No hassles with the planning of shifts or personnel to manage the 24 / 7 support, as it is taken care of by the outsource company.

5) No issues associated with training the support staff.

Outsource companies are able to provide you with high quality, but cheap support due to the low cost of living standards in those countries. Most of the hosting companies are located in the United States, Canada and Europe, and the major outsource companies are located in countries like India. Due to the comparatively lower cost of living in countries like India, the above is made possible. With inhouse support, you have to pay the wages that is par with the living standards in the United States and such; which makes it an expensive option.

There are several myths related to outsourcing jobs. According to the trade and foreign aid research conducted by The Heritage Foundation , the American economy has only benefitted from outsourcing jobs to the asian countries, and has not gone down, as the general concept is.

But with outsourced support, you have got to make the right choice. Due to the huge demand for professionals in the ITES (Information Technology Enables Services), many webhosts can't find employees with expertise in the relevant fields. You should be doing a research on the work culture and standards of the different outsourced companies before making the right source. A search for the leading outsourced companies in forums like http://webhostingtalk.com can provide you with pro and con views that you'll require to make the decision.

Still, most of the outsourced companies provide you with a testing period of upto a month to test them out. You can utilize this time period to analyze the quality of your support company, if you are not sure about it.

The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:

DISADVANTAGES

------------------

In-House

1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe

2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support

3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.

Outsourced

1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. (Overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company.)

2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company's internal policies.

3) Have got to make sure of the written (spoken too, if required) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.

The language barrier could be an issue with only a few cheap quality outsourced support companies. It would be a good measure to talk to their representatives / contact points over chat / telephone to get an idea of how it's going to be overall. With the leading support companies, the language problems should not happen, as they would have required formal training both technically, as well as with customer orientation. Still, it is very important from your part to make sure of their support quality.

To summarize, it is always better to choose a good outsourced support firm, that maintains it's promises and does not comprise on quality, rather than yourself employing separate staff to handle your technical support, sales / billing and server administration. (Unless you have got the money to roll, and is keen on having all your employees available in person upon your call.)

The Quality Factor

Speaking of quality, what do one exactly mean by or point to when talking about the Quality of Support (QoS)? Quality is not an accident, but the collective output of well planned stages of service, with the very best systems to back them up. When we refer to the complete QoS, there are a lot of points that comes into consideration – Being knowledgeable, Polite, Communicative, Honest, Fast, Empathetic, Competent, Responsible and above all, overall Perfection. Let's check out how these becomes important.

Being knowledgeable is the most important part. Always keep in mind that our customers needs competent people at the receiving end of their mails and calls. By being knowledgeable, we mean that the support person should be possessing the proper knowledge level related to the support and service that we are offering. In this case, say, if you are a host who offers Cpanel hosting on Red hat Enterprise Linux servers, the technical support staff that works for you should be having extensive knowledge in the following areas:

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Tons Of Web Site Traffic For You As You Research Your Subject
What's the easiest and best way to get tons of web site traffic? The answer may not be very obvious to you but before I give it to you, let me ask another related question. What's the easiest and best way to keep your blog or web site content fresh and interesting? The answer should be obvious. You should research by visiting other sites similar to yours to see what they are saying about the same topics that your are discussing.Now the beauty of all this is that even as you do your research on what others are writing about your subject, you can kill two birds with one stone by also working on your traffic while you are there. Here's how.You can leave a comment about your honest opinion on what the post that you have just read. You do not have to agree with what they are saying as both agreeing and violently opposing what they are saying will give you tons of traffic. In fact agreeing will tend to give you slightly less traffic. Violently resist the temptation to get involved in spam commenting. It does not pay. The right way to do this is to write your comment and if you are using blogger.com, you don't even need to link, just make sure your profile is interesting enough and many readers will click on your name and be led straight to the Blogger profiles page from where they will easily find your blog.If you want to leave a link then the proper way is to separate it from your comment so that the site owner has the option of deleting the link. You’re your initial comment, you can follow it up with the word, "By the way, those who may be interested in reading my full length article on this subject can go to (your blog or web site page address)." When you are this considerate, 9 out of 10 times, the site owner will leave it in place.When you oppose what the blogger has said on their post, you create controversy which attracts attention. Folks will be interested to read both sides of the "conflict" and decide which side they belong. Whatever they decide you can be assured of plenty of traffic to your site.

b Hosting Support is not child's play. It is something that is NOT to be taken for granted.

Finding the Right Support for you

In-House or Outsourced??

ADVANTAGES

---------------

In-House

1) Direct interaction with the support staff in person

2) Direct recruitment of the support staff yourself, so as to meet your ideal requirements on first-hand

3) Local market knowledge and expertise when it comes to sales and marketing

4) Ready availability-upon-call of your in house team in case of any emergency

Outsourced

1) Far cheaper than what is required to maintain an inhouse support team

2) You can concentrate on your business marketing, while the outsource company takes care of the technical side.

3) Expertise in specific fields related to every server software.

4) No hassles with the planning of shifts or personnel to manage the 24 / 7 support, as it is taken care of by the outsource company.

5) No issues associated with training the support staff.

The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:

DISADVANTAGES

------------------

In-House

1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe

2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support

3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.

Outsourced

1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. (Overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company.)

2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company's internal policies.

3) Have got to make sure of the written (spoken too, if required) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.

The Quality Factor

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Getting Help from A Private Investigator Referral
Greg has been managing a small surf shop by the beach. Business was doing quite well until some incidents of robbery occurred in the area. Since the perpetrators have not been found yet, everyone was suspicious especially when hiring an employee to help in the store.When an applicant arrives, Greg usually reviews the resume before conducting an interview. After speaking to the person, the paper is placed on the active list while that don’t are placed in the trash box.Since it is possible that this is an inside job, Greg thought about getting a private investigator to do a background check on these individuals and those who are clean can be given the job.The directory had a list of private investigation agencies. It is easy to call one up but it is also difficult to trust given that Greg has no idea on the reputation of this company.The best thing to do when was to get a friend or a relative to refer a private investigator agency. After asking around, there was one that was found. This office did a good job in the past, which assured Greg about the task that was to be done.Greg called the agency and a representative dropped by the store to get all the information needed. This included the resume of the applicants so the address and the previous work experience can be checked.The specialist will also check if these future employees had any criminal record or affiliations to any gangs that are known to be around the neighborhood. The only thing for Greg to do now was wait for the report submitted by the investigator.After a few days, the report said that out of the 6 final candidates, four of the applicants were clean. Though the number of people for the job was reduced, it made Greg more comfortable in choosing the right person for the job.Less than a week after, Greg had two part time assistants working in the shop. This made the place easier to handle since it is hard to man the counter and work on the surfboards that was ordered by another client.People who want to feel safe about the people being hired should do a background check. Aside from calling the previous employer, it will help to call a private investigator that was referred by someone else to make sure the job will be done right.

pport company? There has been disputes over this on most of the web hosting forums. Both the options has got advantages and disadvantages. But on tallying with the positive and negative sides of both of them, my vote goes to outsourced support. A comparison of the advantages is provided in the chart below:

ADVANTAGES

---------------

In-House

1) Direct interaction with the support staff in person

2) Direct recruitment of the support staff yourself, so as to meet your ideal requirements on first-hand

3) Local market knowledge and expertise when it comes to sales and marketing

4) Ready availability-upon-call of your in house team in case of any emergency

Outsourced

1) Far cheaper than what is required to maintain an inhouse support team

2) You can concentrate on your business marketing, while the outsource company takes care of the technical side.

3) Expertise in specific fields related to every server software.

4) No hassles with the planning of shifts or personnel to manage the 24 / 7 support, as it is taken care of by the outsource company.

5) No issues associated with training the support staff.

The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:

DISADVANTAGES

------------------

In-House

1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe

2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support

3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.

Outsourced

1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. (Overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company.)

2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company's internal policies.

3) Have got to make sure of the written (spoken too, if required) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.

The Quality Factor

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Have the Right Mindset and Your Business Success Will Follow
Ask yourself a question. “What is the number 1 reason you started your own business and what do you want to achieve from it?”Invariably the answer for ambitious business owners is to achieve financial freedom and in doing so create an independent life. For many, this is the key driving force apart from those who just want to have a lifestyle business. Generating a comfortable lifestyle is a fine goal however I believe it’s much more exciting to create an independent life rather than just another job!Well, the sad news is that most business owners only ever achieve a reasonable lifestyle not the financial freedom that many of them long for. Why is this? Having worked with business owners for over 20 years I have discovered several key reasons for this:· Lack of a clear strategy· Lack of true commitment to fulfil goals· The short-term need just to earn money (to pay bills etc)· Need to satisfy the immediate demands of customers and staff· Ineffective marketing· Poor implementation due to lack of appropriate systems· Not able to rely on others to get work done consistently and to a high standardFrom the business owners I have worked with I have also discovered that there are 7 elements that create success and produce financial freedom. I would like to share them with you over as series of articles. In this article I would like to cover “having a winning mindset” as this is probably the biggest single ingredient of success or failure.Have a winning mindset You need to decide what defines you. These are your beliefs, your habits and who you spend time with. You need to truly believe with total mind, heart and soul conviction that you can achieve what you want in life. This can be achieved by helping others through the appropriate application of your knowledge and skills.The fruits of our life are the result of cause and effect impacting on us. Some people make the mistake of concentrating on the fruit. They want the fruit (the effect – the success) but fruit doesn’t come from fruit. Fruit comes from seed. It is cause. In order to create our success we need to focus on the cause.For example, if we are at a well and we want water we will have to prime the pump first. If we are standing over a fire wanting heat we need to add fuel and light it first. We can shout and s

ut it.

The disadvantages associated with the two types of support are provided in the chart below:

DISADVANTAGES

------------------

In-House

1) Expensive when taking into consideration the living standards in North America and Europe

2) Headaches related to personnel management related with maintaining an inhouse team for support

3) Remedies are to be made by you in case of any immediate non availability of support staff due to reasons like their resignation without prior notice, termination, expiry etc.

Outsourced

1) No direct interaction in person with the support staff. (Overcomed if efficient chat support is provided with a contact person at the company.)

2) Have to get accustomed with your support people, as they might keep on changing according to the outsource company's internal policies.

3) Have got to make sure of the written (spoken too, if required) language proficiency of the company staff, as English is not the mother tongue in the outsourced companies.

The Quality Factor

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Abridging eBooks Into Multiple Online Articles
Many people have written an eBook and they have marketed this either on their professional consulting website or at Lulu.com or a similar service. If you have written an eBook it might make sense to break down the book into chapters and perhaps each chapter could be made into three to five articles.Then you can put these articles all online at an article online submission web site free of charge and put your name and business in the byline at the bottom with a link to your web site. Let's say you wrote the book of 70 pages and it has 14 chapters. If each one of the chapters could be made into five articles then that would be 70 articles that you could have online driving traffic to your web site; nice.Additionally and best of all most online articles submission web sites allow others to pick up the content in place it onto their Web sites, which means you may have your 70 articles replicated in other places on the Internet as much as five to ten times each. And each article somewhere on the Internet is attracting click thus or potential online customers to your web site for your business you are in luck. Since some articles will be some places and others in other places, you can still sell them your eBook online, because it is all there together you see?I have written a few articles and put them online and noticed that the traffic on my web site has gone ballistic. Although personally I do not sell anything the traffic counts are quite high and if I was to sell something and convert even a percentage of those click thrus to sales there is no doubt that I could generate revenue in that way. Consider all this in 2006.

Linux Operating System structure

Linux commands – common and advanced

Linux Internet server implementations

Linux server security

Differences between RHEL, and other versions of RedHat Linux, and also other distros and flavors of Linux. Proficiency in Unix / Solaris flavors will be an added advantage.

Cpanel control panel proficiency using both fronted tools (administrative / user control panel interfaces) and also the Cpanel control panel specific files in the backend of the servers.

Overall, by being knowledgeable, it means that the support team must be well qualified and trained to handle the job that they are doing. Choose your team of experts wisely.

Then comes the communication part. This is as important as being knowledgeable. A support technician needs to address an issue raised by you or an end customer in grammatically correct language, and also including all the important points related to the issue, that the customer should be made aware of. A polite, concise and communicative reply addressing the various aspects of a support ticket always gives the end customer a feeling of care. A good support tech is one who emphathises the client, i.e, think by standing in the client's shoes. When a support person can feel the client's problems, and read in between the lines, it puts the end client at ease, no matter what the issue is. Just take the case of the following scenario. A customer has published the following support ticket:

==============================================================

Hi,

I am not able to send mails out of my account user@foo.com. The mails are not going out of Outlook Express, and I am getting the following error:

Mail refused error "sorry that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts error 553"

Please get it fixed ASAP. I am unable to contact my customers !!!

Paul Smith

==============================================================

And consider the following replies, which implies the same message, and tell me which one feels better:

Response # 1:

==============================================================

This is since you are not doing POP before SMTP. Check your incoming mails, before trying to send them using OE.

Support team

==============================================================

Response # 2:

==============================================================

Hi Paul,

This error is caused when email client software configured with multiple email accounts from different domains is used to send email to an account that it has not checked for messages first. To get over this, always make sure to check the incoming mails using your Outlook Express, before trying to send mails out of it. This is called POP before SMTP.

An easy remedy is to check your email from user@foo.com before sending or set your email client to check email every 15 minutes or close and reopen your Outlook Express. It shall work for you, and you shall be able to mail your customers in no time.

Best Regards,

Tech name

Support team

==============================================================

Upon examining the above two replies, what do you feel? No matter how frustrated the end customer who sent in the ticket might be, response # 2 will provide him with the “care factor” that response # 1 could not do. In response # 2, the support tech has done the following:

Analyzed that the customer is not very techny-savvy

Understood that he is trying to send in some important mail(s), and is frustrated with things not going working correctly for him

Replied the customer very politely and with at most care keeping both the above two considerations in mind.

Support techs should always be polite to the customers. Some of the customers may even use harsh terms while mailing the support team, due to their frustration. A support tech should just ignore those comments, keeping in mind the fact that it is nothing personal and the customer is just angry with some utility not working for him properly. There are certain rare cases, when the support team receives really hard-to-interact-with customers. Some people might just do not understand what the support person is trying to say, or not listen what he is asking the customer to do. In these rare cases of non co operation, it is always better for the hosting owner (you) to respond to the customer asking him politely to co operate with the support team, or any solution to his problem might get unnecessarily delayed.

The overall perfection of a support team is the right combination of the following qualities:

1) Technical Superiority

2) Command over written and communicative skills

3) Politeness, Friendliness and Empathy

4) Responsibility

5) Endurance

The webhosts, on the other hand should also understand that the support team is an integral part of his business, and treat them with respect and consideration. The webhosting owner should be a good manager here, who knows how to make his support team work with their maximum potential for him. At the same time, he should not pressurize them by unnecessarily interfering in their job. Always keep them at ease, and make them feel free to approach you with any of their requirements / suggestions.

Conclusion

To conclude, when you appoint the support team, to assist with your business, make sure of the following things:

You get what you are promised of (24 / 7 support, and the exact time limits required to reply to, and resolve a problem).

Your support team co ordinates perfectly with you, and has got a good knowledge on the plans, services, and offers that you provide your clients with, so that they can be serviced better, and on time.

Your support team is friendly and courteous, and is always willing to go that 'extra step' when it comes to customer satisfaction.

Your support team is extremely knowledgeable and should be able to do anything that their job demands out of them.

You should be in excellent rapport with your support team, and should let them be at ease with you; and at the same time you should know where to draw the fine line as well.

In the webhosting business, where stiff competition awaits you, it is always the customer evangelism (customers preaching the good points of your webhosting service) that brings in clients. There is no publicity as mouth publicity. Your support team would be responsible for more than 80% of it. If they are good, your business shall flourish, and if it's the other way around, you are going to have a tough time in the future.

So choose wisely. There is a bright future awaiting you.

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