[davef8]

I'm new to the reselling business and I'm thinking about reselling dedicated hosting solutions. I'm not looking to chop the boxes up into pieces instead I will sell the dedicated solutions as is with value added customer service.

I'm still in the research/feasability stage and I wanted to ask those of you with experience how many support reps do you typically need to handle x amount of customers. Let's assume each customer has one website on a dedicated linux machine.

Can one rep handle 40, 50, or even 100 customers? What would be a ball park ratio based on your past experiences? The support being provided would be full service managed solutions so we would do just about anything the customer wanted including supporting third party apps.

[bright-byte]

:) Hi davef8,
Could you clarify if you will be reselling dedicated servers, shared hosting packages or both, as this is not clear from your post it makes it hard to give you a answer.

[davef8]

I would exclusively be selling dedicated servers. No shared hosting or VDS/VPS stuff. Hope that clarifies things.

[bright-byte]

:) Ok that clears it up, although with dedicated servers it is harder to estimate how many individual servers a Support member can look after at one time because of the varying scripts, programs, security levels, OS's and much more that can make one server a nightmare while others with just basic set ups are a breeze to offer support for.

Where a reliable server with a basic set up can require very little support other more complicated and resource demanding servers can require much more. and you have to reason in the level of server admin experience the client has as well, if they have a high degree of admin knowledge there will be very little need for support, however if their level is low you can expect quite a few support calls to begin with.

So the answer to your question is, there is no standard amount of servers that a support staff can look after as there are too many variables that can arise and the staffs level of expertise will also play a significant role in the amount they can take on.

As you are just starting out it would be best to keep your staffing levels low and take on more staff as the need arises, if you have a good knowledge of server admin then there would be no need to employ more than one support staff member to take on the night shift (the hours you will need to catch up with some sleep as you probably wont get much to start of with ) and as your server base increases so will your need for support staff.

[davef8]

bright-byte,

Thanks for the info that does shed some light on my concerns. But I'd still like to hear some kind of ballpark figure just so I know what I'm getting into and what my margins need to be in order to make this business feasible. The way things are currently looking I would be attempting to support 40 clients with one person myself as support staff. Is this even remotely possible or completely un-realistic?

[bright-byte]

:) Hi again davef8,
Yes that is feasible, 40 clients/servers would be quite easy to maintain support for although you must consider to offer true 24/7 support (if that's what you want to do) there will be the late night and early am calls that are possible and therefore the lack of sleep etc, if you are comfortable with that, you should be fine.

Another alternative would be to outsource support during the late night early am hours to one of the many companies that offer these services, most of these companies offer various outsourced support packages from the works which include email, live chat and phone support for $X a month, down to just email support where they charge around 25-50 cents per email and you purchase in blocks of 50 or more.


Hope this helps.

[davef8]

bright-byte thanks that really helped me out. I completely agree with outsourcing support during the nite hours. Although I plan on providing full support during the day I will need to outsource support at night if I plan on sleeping.

[ksstudio]

If you provide only day time support, 1 tech might be more than enough for you?

If you are offering 24 x 7 real support, you will need at least 3 Tech working on shifts?

[point]

Another alternative would be to outsource support during the late night early am hours to one of the many companies that offer these services, most of these companies offer various outsourced support packages from the works which include email, live chat and phone support for $X a month, down to just email support where they charge around 25-50 cents per email and you purchase in blocks of 50 or more.

Hey bright-byte could you recommend such company...or what keywords should one use for google search??

Thanx

:D