How many times have you received an Abuse ticket and responded to the issue by suspending what appears to be the culprit account? You provide an update in the ticket, letting our team know that you’ve “taken care of the problem,” and you consider it resolved. A few moments later, the ticket is updated on our end, and an abuse administrator is asking follow-up questions: “How did the issue occur?” “What did you do to resolve the issue?” “What steps are being taken to secure the server in order to prevent further abuse?”

Who cares how the issue happened if it’s resolved now, right? Didn’t I respond quickly and address the problem in the ticket? What gives? Well, dear readers, it’s analogy time:

In the same way that a hull breach can sink a ship, so too can a security hole on your server cause problems for your (and your clients’) data. In the last installment of “Tips from the Abuse Department,” Andrew explained some of the extremely common (and often overlooked) ways servers are compromised and used maliciously. As he mentioned in his post, Abuse tickets are, in many cases, the first notification for many of our customers that “something’s wrong.”

At a crucial point like this, it’s important to get the water out of the boat AND prevent the vessel from taking on any more water. You won’t be sailing smoothly unless both are done as quickly as possible.

Let’s look at an example of what thorough response to an Abuse ticket might look like:

While it’s quite a bit more work than simply identifying the domain and account responsible for the abuse and suspending it, the extra time you spent investigating the cause of the issue will prevent the same issue from happening after your client “fixes” the problem by deleting the files/directories. Invariably, they’d get compromised again in the same way when the domain is restored, and you’d hear from the Abuse department again.

Server security goes hand in hand with systems administration, and even though it’s not a very fun part of the job, it is a 24/7 responsibility that requires diligence and vigilance. By investing time and effort into securing your servers and fixing your hull breach rather than just bailing water overboard, your customers will see less downtime, you’ll be using your server resources more efficiently, and (best of all) you won’t have the Abuse team hounding you about more issues!

-Garrett

P.S. I came up with a brilliant analogy about DNS and the postal service, so that might be a topic for my next post …

• Smile
• Present yourself honestly and openly
• Be positive, confident and courteous.

I remember when I applied to SoftLayer back in April of 2010. I was working for one of SoftLayer’s competitors at the time, and one of my previous coworkers moved over to SoftLayer. He made mention of what a great company SoftLayer was and that I should think about applying. After submitting my resume, I received a call from the data center manager to come in for an interview at the DAL01 location. I prepared myself to make the best first impression I could. I heeded the words of my father saying, “A firm hand-shake goes a long way.” After my initial interview, I was given a tour of the one of the server rooms:

I was completely blown away by the organization and structure of the server room. I was overly impressed with how organized the work benches were, how the crash carts all had their place, how everything was labeled, how all the cables were bound up neatly, and how the automation system was in place to do the everyday, menial tasks. Here I was trying to impress the DC Manager with my skills and but I can honestly say I was more impressed with SoftLayer. It left a definite first impression on me.

I drove home after the interview thinking I would LOVE to work for this company. When checking my email a short time later, I found an offer letter from the HR department! I started for SoftLayer a few weeks later as a Customer Support Administrator. My next “first impression” of the company came when I walked into the break room and noticed all of the amazing snacks provided to employees. I opened up the refrigerator to place my lunch bag and realized that SoftLayer provides soft drinks and energy drinks to keep their SLayers hydrated. I joked with the DC manager that “SoftLayer should put this information in the job description as a company benefit.”

Although making a good first impression is important, making a lasting impression can set you apart from your competition. SoftLayer is a cut above the rest from the other hosting providers out there. Whether you are a new customer or a long-time customer, you have to agree that SoftLayer makes fantastic first and lasting impressions. And just like this blog post, you can’t help but tell other people about the SoftLayer difference.

-Greg

What NOT to Do in Support

The fact that you’re reading this blog post means you probably understand social media. You probably also understand why providing great customer service is important, so I’ll spare you that as well. What you may not know is that there are much better tools to provide outstanding customer service than the ones you’re already using. Here are four big tips for you as you’re planning your support channels:

1. Don’t build a custom contact form.
Building a custom contact form on your website takes valuable time and resources away from your core business. Instead, sign up and get a widget from UserVoice (or one of our competitors) and in less than 30 seconds you’ll have a contact form that supports any number of custom fields you want to add, allows you to append your own customer-specific metadata, supports attachments and, most importantly, will auto-suggest relevant FAQ articles even before the customer submits the form.

2. Don’t use shared email for customer support.
It’s true that you can take managing customer support via a shared email inbox pretty far. You won’t really feel the pain until a couple of issues slip through the digital crack because it wasn’t clear who on your team was responsible for following up with the customer. But why go through that? These days you can choose from a number of inexpensive, purpose-built tools, like UserVoice, targeted at companies that want to provide better customer service. Starting at $5/mo you can have a complete support solution that will grow with your business when you are finally ready to add that 2nd or 3rd support rep to your team.

3. Don’t waste time gathering feedback on message boards.
Scanning message boards to gather user feedback sounds like a good idea, but it’s really painful. Forums are both noisy and insular. Someone posts “I want you to add X” then a few people reply “+1″ but then someone else says “I think X is good but only if you do Y to it.” Very quickly you don’t know what anyone really wants. And you especially don’t have an easy way to follow-up with people directly. Worst of all, you’re only hearing from a vocal minority. Casual users won’t go into your forums and won’t wade through 10 pages of +1′s to add their voice, they’ll just give up.

UserVoice Feedback gives you a better way to harness customer feedback and turn it into something useful. It starts with a simple prompt: How can we make ___insert_your_company___ better? Customers give their feedback and vote up the best ideas. It’s easier for customers to get involved and give you feedback, and it’s much easier for you to follow-up and keep these important customers in the loop.

4. Don’t hide from your customers.
This really should be the first recommendation. The sad fact is, people still don’t expect great customer service, and they certainly don’t expect you to be ready and willing to listen to their feedback, especially with that small gray “contact” link buried in your footer. Show customers that their experience and their feedback is important, nay, vital to your business. Put a big link at the top of the page, or a widget on the side of it. Something that tells people you’re not “business as usual.” Show them you really care.

I started UserVoice because I wanted to make doing all of these things simple so that companies could focus on what really matters: building their products and communicating with their customers, not setting up all this stuff. I hope you’ll find it as useful as our thousands of existing customers have in getting you back to work.

-Richard White, UserVoice