How does your customer support system work?

ANSWER: As we are a “managed” hosting company, much of our “support” is in fact pro-active, meaning that we constantly keep an eye on your server without you asking us for help in order to ensure speed, stability, and security. However, while full-time server management is 100% included, the actual management of your website or WordPress is not included. As a sort of “bonus” feature for our hosted clients, we do in fact try to login to your WordPress around once each month to check for any “emergency” concerns or security flags, and we may update a plugin or two and clear some of your spam; but please keep in mind this is more of a good faith gesture, and is not part of any contract, SLA agreement, or otherwise.

If you are in need of monthly maintenance (recommended) please consider our Experts.

When It Comes Time To Ask Us For Help

Therefore, if you have a technical issue related to your server or otherwise, please contact us at anytime. However, the ability of our support team to assist you may depend entirely on the type of issue that’s involved. For example, we don’t offer web design or coding (programming) services of any kind — neither free or paid — as it is simply not our area of focus.

That said, we’ve recently begun (mid 2016) experimenting with having some talented freelancers join our Experts program, so that in the case that our clients want or need some “extra” help via paid services, we can refer a normal “free” support ticket into an off-ticket freelancing gig. While this may seem like an attempt by LittleBizzy to charge for customer support, it is actually a reaction to dozens and dozens of support requests that we’ve received that start out like, “Hey guys, this function isn’t working and I really need it fixed ASAP… can I hire you to research and debug this for me?” In other words, our company is not profiting whatsoever if an “Expert” freelancer acquires an off-ticket paid gig from one of our hosting clients.

In the long-term, we will most likely seek out full-time customer support staff; however, during this growth phrase we are trying to be a bit creative in order to expand our team while also providing our clients with some unique opportunities. For this reason, our clients may notice some of the same “faces” on both our Support team and in the Experts program.

Free Vs. Paid Customer Support Issues

It should be clearly understood that LittleBizzy does not aim to be a development agency; that is, “client services” is not at all an interest for us besides a handful of niche add-on services that complement our managed hosting. Still, due to the current nature of our support team being made up of contractors, there may be an opportunity for occasional off-ticket technical consulting between our clients and our support team (“Experts”) directly. In such cases, the nature of your business dealings with them is 100% separate and unassociated with LittleBizzy in every way: financially, legally, and otherwise.

FREE Support Issues:

• VPS setup and site migration (first time is FREE, $80 each after that)
• general WordPress/server/hosting error diagnosis
• WordPress plugin or resource recommendations (limited)
• assistance with clearing a cache(s)
• assistance with configuring CodeGuard, SendGrid, WP StageCoach, UptimeRobot, etc (included services)
• diagnosing/fixing any file permissions/owners related issues
• assistance with domain nameserver issues
• assistance with editing DNS records
• assistance with SFTP usage
• assistance with configuring Easy Updates Manager or Must Use plugins
• diagnosing any SSL/HTTPS related errors/issues
• help with malware related issues (limited)

PAID Support Issues:

For the most part, anything not listed above would likely be a “paid” support issue. This doesn’t necessary mean that our team is available for a paid consult; rather, we will most likely refer any of the below requests to our Experts.

• general business/technology/marketing/etc consultations
• design work or coding work of any sort
• diagnosing and/or fixing a javascript/CSS/etc conflict
• database cleanup/optimization
• professional malware removal/deep scanning
• WordPress theme/plugin related uploads/installation/configuration/customization/etc
• file or directory management (server)
• CodeGuard/backup restorations or roll-backs (etc)
• online research or third party liasoning
• etc, etc.

PAID Add-On Services:

• SFTP setup and configration
• SSL (HTTPS) configuration and 301 redirects
• SendGrid email delivery configuration (i.e. SMTP)
• DNSSEC setup and configuration
• Google Apps setup/migration
• Google GSC (Webmasters) setup and optimization (includes robots.txt and sitemap.xml)
• Help Scout setup and configuration (support ticket system)
• MailPoet email newsletter setup, basic training, and opt-in form setup (SendGrid required)
• Malware removal (not common, sometimes purchased by pre-LittleBizzy clients)
• Site Migration (available to non-clients or if multiple migrations required)
• Google Maps business placement and configuration service
• Analytics Insight provides powerful data visualization and recommendations based on 30+ days of Google Analytics
• SEO Audit is our world-famous audit delivered by Google Sheets with TONS of technical insights
• Bitly Shortlinks can be setup using the WP-Bitly plugin and a bit of magic
• Facebook Likes will get your company at least 500-1000+ real page likes
• MySQL Optimize is an effective way to clean up and optimize your WordPress database

We kindly ask that the account owner (billing person) submit any official support requests. Due to our Privacy Policy, we cannot give out any of your server access information or otherwise to third parties (i.e. designers or developers).