Reform Support and Upgrades

[craigbrass]

I know I have suggested these directly to a few staff members but decided to post it here too to see what everyone thinks.

1. Support and Updates should be separated into two services. Updates should be charged at something like $29.95 for 6 months or $49.95 if paid yearly.
2. Support should start being charged on a points basis. You should get so many support points included with a product purchase. After this you will need to pay for packs of support points. Support points should then be deducted based on the amount of time the staff member has to spend on the issue. Sales / Account / Bugs should not be charged obviously. You could say 1 point for each minute of the staff member's time. This will make it much easier to work out how much needs to be charged to cover each staff member's wages.

Post if you agree guys. Really want it to change to something like this as I think it is unfair for people who don't use support to be charged just to get the updates.

[Digital Mayhem]

I sort of agree but I would like to see it offered this way

$25.00 6 Months of Upgrades

$25.00 6 Months of Support

$49.95 6 Months of Support/Upgrades


I wouldn't like the Points for Support System because 1 reason you would then be punishing people who have alot of problems even if the problems are their fault...

[craigbrass]

That is why I said bugs should not be charged *winks*

[Digital Mayhem]

hench why I wasn't referring to bugs wink wink

[eiden]

I agree, support and upgrades shouldn't be bundled.

[Siora]

Its very hard to put a time limit on support or even account for time. This only causes frustration for the end user. Why? Well what if I ask a support question that could have been answered in 30 min however the support staff member decided to take his time and put down 60min. I have now lost 30min of support time because of this which I don't think is fair to the end user. This setup would require trust and i don't think Kayako has gained a lot of trust from its end-user's from what I've read.

[Jamie Edwards]

Something to consider - if something went wrong with your setup and required support but you did not have active support, would you be happy with a delay of up to 24 hours to process the support purchase before you began submitting the issue?

The bundle of support and upgrades is a good model and fairly simple. If the difference in price was big, then I could see a valid point but the cost of support that is added to this $49.95 renewal is not. I do not think it is an important enough issue to introduce a pay-per-support system, which itself would present numerous more issues.

[BigDawgRob]

A annual support charge would be welcome. It probably costs more for my company to process the purchase order twice a year than the option itself, plus it's a pain having to remember to renew.

[craigbrass]

Something to consider - if something went wrong with your setup and required support but you did not have active support, would you be happy with a delay of up to 24 hours to process the support purchase before you began submitting the issue?

Why have manual processing of the support points puchase? They have already had the validation call for their main purchase.

Doing this would allow you to easily introduce weekend support as users could make a ticket as answer ASAP and if that is done, outside hours tickets could be charged at maybe double the point rate per minute or something.

[craigbrass]

Just noticed you have moved this Jamie. This forum is "SupportSuite, eSupport and LiveResponse". Should it not be in the forum I initially posted in (Comments, Questions and Feedback) as it is a general company feedback?

[Jamie Edwards]

It appeared to me to be more of a suggestion than a discussion, so I moved it here.

[craigbrass]

Ah, ok.

[Jamie Edwards]

The suggestions here will not be implemented. Changes to the support packages structure are planned for release along with the Version 4 product line. There are no details available as of yet.