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Many startup companies are run by a single owner who juggles the roles of sales, support and billing person by himself. Support is one department where his technical skills would be tested daily . Single owners who are not technically ready, would end up losing more money and time which otherwise could have been used effectively for growth of the company.

There was this owner of a company who was brilliant in marketing and sales .Since he was not a tech guy, he used to spent time googling to find solutions for the support queries from his users . However the support tickets took a long time for getting responses . Due to his customer relation skills, he was able to hang on for some time, but soon clients started leaving . Even after 2 years in the industry, he is still owns a single server, while others have moved ahead. Funny fact, is he is still not ready to accept the fact that his tech skills are not good enough.
The support determines the customer retention factor, which is deciding factor for the company's growth . Hence it should not be neglected . Its okay to try your luck with 50 or so clients at hand . But once your client base grows over 100, get a proper system running . If you are not familiar with systems involved, contact any outsourced tech support company and get a single tech from there to get the system ready . You just need a dedicated tech for 12 hours to install the system for you . Make sure that you get the following services done by the tech.

1) Ticketing System / Help desk installed

2) Backup procedure installed ( if not available already )

3) Customer Contact Form in your site installed.

4) Security auditing of your server.

All of this will cost you very little. Once done, you can start providing quality support for your customers.
Remember to get the tech from a good company, as there are many out there . A few are Bobcares, Touch support ( Don't forget to checkout the testimonials of their customers before coming to a decision ).

There are a lot of newbies, who would like to take care of their customers themselves. Problem is most of the issues that can be solved by an experienced person in 10 minutes will take an hour or more for a non-technical person. This will leave a bad impression for a startup hosting company.
If you are technically good, then have an email-based customer support. That'll help archive all communication, and also give time to think twice before providing response. As a startup company, its always safe to read through what you are responding before sending it. The problem with chat/phone is that your knowledge level gets thrown open in front of the customer. A single mistake in the response can bring in bad reputation.