RE: Two good articles to read

You're one of the few vendors who have "Customer Service" painted on your
forehead. Other ISV's, not so much. IBM has farmed most of the customer
contact out to BP's, and in my opinion, it's to IBM's detriment.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Bradley Stone
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2017 9:11 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Two good articles to read

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 8:31 AM, Paul Nelson <nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Part of the moral of the story, I guess, is that vendors should also be
aware of how frequently their customers call for support, and factor that
into any penalties they charge. In this case, there had been exactly zero
calls to 1-800-IBM-SERV in the prior three years.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Paul,

I see where you're going with this, but it all depends on what you mean by
"support".

Hand-holding that could have been easily done without a call if the
customer used the FAQs and DOCs

or

Bug fixes.

I get both. I do feel I should charge extra for some of the calls I get,
as software support isn't meant to be a place you can go to learn how
library lists work (
http://fieldexit.blogspot.com/2016/02/when-product-support-becomes-education
.html
)

But I don't. But I should... but I don't. :)

Just my view as an ISV for the past 20 years:

I love it when my phone doesn't ring for a day or two. And normally when
it does, it's just "We're moving to a new OS. Does your software work on
it?" or any other FAQ that is in the FAQ. ;)

I'd call that a success on both sides. They don't have to call me because
the product works and are being more productive, and I have more time to
add new features.

A little over a year ago I switched to a very small yearly flat fee for all
of my offerings. That includes licensing, support and version upgrades.
KISS. Doesn't get much more simple than that. I doubt most ISVs could
survive on that, though.

Bradley V. Stone
www.bvstools.com
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