Hi,

My business opens the second day of next month and one thing I found to be interesting is charging for extra technical support.

As a standard, I will be offering all my customers 1 trouble ticket per month, free server reboots and a response time of 12 hours. For additional money, they can receive increased technical support, i.e.:

$12 mo. = 5 trouble tickets per month, free reboots, 8 hour response
$25 mo. = 10 trouble tickets per month, free reboots, 8 hour response
$45 mo. = 20 trouble tickets per month, free reboots, 6 hour response, AIM support

The reason I charge for technical support is because of the phrase, "you get what you pay for,"

Do you think this is reasonable? If not what should I change.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!

Well, your idea is very interesting. The big problem that I see is that 1 trouble ticket (or ANY number really) a month might not be enough for people to actually solve problems that are your fault.

i.e. if something happens to the server, for whatever reason, and the config for one client gets screwed up ... and they already asked you a question about setting up their e-mail this month ... now what are they supposed to do?

Just something to think about.

I see what you're getting at, when I thought about this pricing scale, I was taking into fact those who like to ask questions all the time and want help in resolving technical issues that weren't by fault of the company.

What kind of system could I set up in order to avoid a conflict such as the one in the scenerio you explained?

I suggest you check out your competiton and act accrodingly. No one is gonna want the hassle/headache of wondering whether or not they will have to pay for any number of support tickets. Especially when like services are included elsewhere.

Everyone charges for tech support in some form. I think the customers are more comfortable with a system whereby the technical support is figured into the price of the plan.

I guess my prices are high enough to where I can fit in technical support. Thanks for the feedback guys! :)

Good idea because many users think they won't need support. One reason we have a setup charge on our accounts is to cover the cost of the support, however every customer who asked 'oh I don't need support, can I have the setup for free' has so far needed a lot of support.

So I do think Pay-as-you-go support is something that would work well, a lot of UK ISPs offer premium rate phone numbers to get access to support and it is very profitable.

The trouble is, your basic hosting pricing would have to be reasonably low and if anyone did pay for support tickets, the quality would have to be top notch otherwise people will complain: 'oh I paid for this and I've not had any reply!'

Something like $2 per 'support issue', sold in packs of 5, 2 hour response guarantee and 24 hour resolution guarantee would be attractive, refundable if the problem is found to be on the vendors end.

We've thought about doing it, we've not done it only because we don't want to take that direction.

Ahh, great concept ice. :)

Might have a look at ServerBeach as they have a similar system for support tickets.

http://www.serverbeach.com