<OT> support pricing

[Alma J Wetzker]

Net Llama! wrote:
> I've recently been tasked with coming up with realistic pricing for
> technical support.  Currently all that we offer is support M-F 9-5
> support.  I need to set pricing for 12x5 and 24x7 unlimited
> incident offerings.  Does anyone have any experience or suggestions?

Lots of statistics.  What time zones are your customers in?  What is their 
distribution?  How often do you get calls?  etc. etc.

What you need to do is make sure you best people cover the times you are 
likely to get calls.  The 12x5 is simpler because you just vary shift times 
(that would really stink in CA because you potentially have to be able to 
cover EST 0700 hours.  I hate mornings.)

If your call load is light enough for weekends/nights, somebody with a pager 
may be adequate.  (That somebody should get a cash bonus for carrying the 
beeping thing!)  The issues will be for month end and quarter/year end cycles 
for customers (I assume).  That can be setup with the customers so that you 
can schedule support.  Someone may skip a weekday and come in on a heavy weekend.

Obviously, if you coordinate schedules with customers, you can find times to 
skimp on support and times to beef it up.  As for costs, you need to cover all 
personnel costs including shift bonuses, overtime and carrying the beeper. 
you need to cover overhead at the office for the extended times and you can 
charge for employee lines and equipment if they are expected to do support 
from home.  Mark up everything by AT LEAST 35% (60% is better) because you are 
wrong and you need to be able to find folks at odd hours and folks need to get 
paid for that.  (They also don't like being constantly available for a job.) 
If you need more people, factor that in.

The company needs to make a profit from these support contracts and employees 
need to be compensated for the extra time and odd hours.  You may even need to 
hire more folks.

The easier way to do it is find out what you competitors charge and match it 
(or go just a bit less).  This is the typical way these things are done.

     -- Alma