by jaggg125 » Tue Mar 16, 2010 3:52 pm
[quote="LoveGolf"]Thanks, all of this is helpful. I did not think about having our staff rotate on duty call with a pager. I could certainly pay them for being on duty and more if they actually have to field a call. I am a bit concerned about trying to 'sell' customers 24x7 support plans that are not standardized offerings. Have you had any experience with the whole thing going off the rails once a few customers have this plan but with different tweaks -- i don't want custom plans although I don't mind offering it to but a few customers at the start.[/quote]
Hi there - thanks for the note back. I have only ever offered 2 types of support plans myself. The regular one (8x5) and premium (7x24). You can track the different types of support contracts your customers sign up for in your CRM (SalesForce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, Accpac CRM, etc) so that when they call in your agents know what level of service they are entitled to. At my last company we did offer the 24/7 but the premium was so high that all customers just picked the standard support. This saved us for having to implement a full blow night shift. Personally I think the Priority Level is the better way to go. Offer 24/7 Priority 1 Case Support and have someone "on call" to handle those cases until you reach the point when you need a full 24/7 support desk. There are a lot of automation features now available in the different CRM packages out there whereby they can auto-assign cases based on priority, region, etc. They come with "Support Portals" so customers can log cases right at your website. E-mail to Case - it creates a case automatically when an e-mail is received at a designated email address. Some pretty cool stuff all in effort to create a better customer experience. I have had so many customers in the past tell me they stayed with our company not only because the software was great but because of the customer support. When something does go wrong with your product it's your support team who is going to be on the front lines... they will be the ones that can truly shine. I really try to make sure they have the tools they need to do the job.
Cheers!