How do you draw the line between tech support (free) and the sort of assistance that ought to be treated as paid consulting, and how do you do it in a way that does not create a customer relations problem?

Make sure you have a good SLA and/or Terms of Service. Simply state what will and will not be covered, and the charges for those issues that are not covered.

Yep, put it in writing in your terms of service. Usually support reguarding the service you provide is free of charge(in my case) support reguarding software installation, cpanel, etc is a differnet situation...

Good ideas, thanks.

The tricky part is dealing politely with the client who doesn't have a clue. "Excuse me, I need to start the time clock on this one - our SLA does not include helping you learn to use Outlook".



Bill

exactly... The other day, the client needed help working with cute ftp (which I have never used), and was having problems. I was able to connect perfectly with ws ftp. He has been very demanding and submitted about 15 emails in a matter of a few days. He then wanted design help (for free), help getting video to work, and html taught to him. These are not the type of clients I enjoy, and this will show me to explain the free help and paid help better. (Not that they read the TAC anyways...) :rolleyes: