Technical Support for the Web

Your prices are so low! Does this mean I will simply be supporting a "sweatshop"?
Absolutely not. Affordable Staff is a progressive company and we are dedicated to providing excellent remuneration, modern office conditions and team satisfaction for all of our personnel. This allows us to hire the best talent available, thereby maintaining the highest quality of service possible.

Our low prices are due to the relative economics of Pakistan compared to the US/UK, and all of our team members receive good wages by Pakistani standards.

What kind of infrastructure do you have?
We operate from Islamabad, which is the capital city of Pakistan and hub of IT activities. Our offices are located in most expensive and calm area of capital city and are equipped with state-of-the-art machines and broad band Internet connections from premium Internet service providers.

How much experience do your techs have?
At Affordable Staff we have the team of professionals with many year of practice experience in the sales & support for ISPs, web hosting industry, and technology companies. This experience is directly derived from the sales & support of our own commercial products for web hosting and ISP industry. The most famous of which are Hosting Controller (http://hostingcontroller.com), Advanced ISP Billing System (http://advancedispbilling.com), and ASPFusion Suite (http://aspfusion.net).

We are very selective in hiring and we hire top 10% applicants only. We insist that all staff have very strong English skills, a talent for customer service, outstanding troubleshooting skills and at least university-level IT qualifications. Some staff have relevant technical qualifications such as RHCE or CCNA, and years of experience working with Linux and various control panels in the web hosting industry.

What do you classify as a ticket for your 'Per Ticket' plans?
A "ticket" is defined as including a maximum three replies from us on a single issue. If a request from a customer contains multiple issues then each issue will be counted as a separate ticket. Similarly, if a customer writes in regarding a single issue and we reply more than three times, then each three replies will be counted as a ticket.

If I have only 60 domains on your Per Server Plan will I have to pay for a full 200 domains?
Yes. With the Per Server Plan any number of domains up to 200 will fall under the 200 domain pricing. In cases where you have well under 200 domains per server it may be more cost effective for you to use our Per Domain or Per Ticket plans instead.

Under your Dedicated Support plan are staff members actually 'dedicated' to me?
Yes! The staff members which we assign to you on our Dedicated Support plan will be fully dedicated to your requirements. They will not be supporting any other clients at the same time that they are providing support to you, and will be working as if they are your own in-house staff (but on our premises). The biggest advantage of this plan is that you can get your own staff members for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for just US$1400 per month. That's only $1.94 per hour!.

If a Server Admin task is not completed in the allocated time, do I have to purchase additional hours?
We always try to provide you with an accurate estimate of how many hours are needed to complete a particular task. If we are not able to complete the task within the time which you have paid for we will contact you when these hours have been used up. You can then decide if you would like to purchase additional hours so that we can complete the work.

Do you provide custom support plans?
If you are unable to find a suitable plan from existing plans list then you may contact us and let us know your requirements. We will try to suggest a suitable plan from our existing packages or develop a custom plan for you.

Will my clients know that I have outsourced my support services?
We make every effort to ensure that the transfer of your support services to Affordable Staff is completely transparent. We will respond to your customers' queries just as you would, and give no indication that our responses are coming from anywhere but your own in-house support team. After all, we are your very own support team!

How fast will you respond to my customers' queries?
Very fast! We endeavor at all times to provide a response within 30 minutes for the vast majority of customer queries, and to ensure at least 90% of clients receive a full resolution to their problem within 6 hours. Not simple, canned "We will get back to you" responses, but full resolutions!

What names do you normally use to sign off a support ticket?
We normally use our actual names, or no names, to sign off on tickets. If however you have any special policy or requirements we will be happy to follow that.

What do you mean by "standard technical queries"? What is the scope involved?
Standard technical queries comprise the tasks listed in the "Standard Technical Support" table on our Services page.

How do I know that my business and customer details will be safe?
Customer confidentiality is our business. As part of the sign-up process Affordable Staff enters into a legally binding agreement with you which includes relevant non-disclosure clauses. We take all security and privacy issues extremely seriously and stringently insist on utmost professionalism from our staff at all times. Within Affordable Staff information about you and your service is only provided to staff on a need-to-know basis

Do I have to provide you with root access to my servers?
The level of access you give us is entirely up to you. You may, at your discretion, provide us with superuser (root) access to your server(s). Alternatively, you can provide us with access to a restricted set of superuser commands by using a tool such as sudo if you wish. It is possible that in order to perform certain tasks however we may need root access.

What control panels can you support?
We support almost all the control panels which run on Windows & Linux. Hosting Controller, H-Sphere, Cpanel/WHM, Plesk and Ensim are examples of panels we support. If you are unsure of whether the control panel you use is supported, please do not hesitate to contact us for clarification.

What ticket systems do you support?
We support third party ticket systems such as PerlDesk, Kayako, TicketSmith and many more.

What if I don't have my own ticket system?
If you do not have your own ticket system then we can provide you a complete ticketing system solution free of cost. All e-mail queries will be lodged in our central ticket system and answered on your behalf. We will send you a copy of every reply we provide to your customers so that you are kept informed at all times.

I have designed my own ticketing system, can you support it? What information would you need to know?
You can certainly use your own ticket system. If we are using your ticket system we will need to know the login information for that system. Your ticket system will also need to let us know via email (to an address that we provide to you) when a new message arrives on your ticketing system. Alternatively, if you are on our Dedicated Support plan your dedicated staff can simply monitor your ticket system for incoming queries throughout the support period.

Do you offer Windows support?
We are true experts on Windows servers. Our software division had developed first ever control panel for Windows in 1998. We are since then involved in Windows hosting industry and therefore have rich experience in it.

Do you provide support for FreeBSD servers?
Yes, we do support FreeBSD servers.

Can I pay you via check?
Unfortunately we do not accept payments via check and all payments need to be made via PayPal or Credit Card. We accept all major credit cards.

Do you provide any discount for upfront per quarter or annual payments?
We currently do not provide any discounts for additional upfront payments. One reason for this is that we strongly believe that our prices already provide our customers with the highest value-for-money available.

What is the time-frame involved for start-up?
Once you have supplied us with you details via our questionnaires in signup form we generally require two days of "lead time" to organize your support prior to starting full customer support operations. This is to ensure the smoothest possible transition of your support services. If you are on our Dedicated Support plan you may also wish to provide an extra training period for your team members, depending on the type and complexity of your service.

As we do not charge set up fees for any of our support plans, lead time and training is considered as part of your paid support period. If you have a more urgent requirement for services then please do not hesitate to contact us as we will be happy to discuss possible arrangements.

Do you offer telephone support services?
No we do not. In order to provide such a low-cost solution to our clients our personnel operate via the web-based interface of your choice only. Web-based ticketing systems are by far the most efficient and cost-effective support solution available today. By utilizing this technology our technicians are better able to organize, prioritize and respond to customer queries - resulting in faster, more effective customer support.

I host some adult websites. Can you take over my tech support?
Our policy on adult-content is that we can provide you with services that do not require us to directly deal with the adult content. For example, we can provide server maintenance, administration and monitoring, but could not provide customer service (e.g. Per Ticket Plan support) to your clients.

Do you provide training?
Sorry, we do not currently offer training as part of any of our packages.

What other things do I need to worry about?
The short answer is: nothing! Signing up with Support Outlet means:

No more pay checks
No more staff training
No more job interviews
No employee medical benefits
No purchase and maintenance of extra computers
No extra office space and furniture
No requirement for high-speed internet connections
No more worries about sick leave and holidays
No more sleepless nights!