Customer Support Professional Blog

This post is inspired by topics on CSM forum and JoS The Business of Software forum.

We often see or hear this 24 hours a day 7 days a week thing when customer support service availability time is advertised. It sounds really cool. It means you as a customer can apply for support at any time you wish and you’ll surely get help as soon as possible.

But let’s have a closer look at this.

Average customer: do you really need it?

The question seems weird from the first sight. Of course I need it! I might have a problem any time and I wan’t it to be resolved immediately! That’s what a typical customer could say. And yet I would not be so confident.
If you’re not a vampire or a Superman you most probably sleep at night. And the chances are pretty slim that you’ll need support while sleeping. Most suppliers you work with are local companies in the same time zone with you. So if they provide support in business hours that’s normally enough for you. Even if you work with a company located in absolutely different time zone you will get answers to your questions in at most 24 hours which again is enough in most circumstances.
Having said all this I would sum it up: as a customer you don’t need 24×7 support unless the service or product is critical for your business.

Average company: can you really afford it?

And now let’s fly to the supplier premises. What do you need for 24×7 support to come true? Of course typical email support or different FAQs, knowledge bases, forums and other resources of this kind has little to do with 24×7 service availability. 24×7 means real man sitting at his desk (or maybe lying on a sofa with a bottle of beer) ready to dive into your issue and resolve it in real time. It can be phone, live chat, instant messenger or even email based conversation but it should be real time. And this implies having at least one human being with his or her eyes open and brains fresh for 168 hours per week. As a result of a very simple math exercise we get that at least 4 people are needed in support team. Well, we can find really determined guys, but 3 men is the smallest number that won’t make us cheaters. So switch from business hours support to 24×7 support increases number of people in the support service by a factor of 3. And this means that expenses will at least triple (very optimistic calculations).
The bottom line is: as a small or medium size company you can’t provide 24×7 support unless this is critical for your service or product.

So I would say that in most cases both clients and companies should concentrate on the quality of customer support and not its availability 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Business hours support is just fine if it’s smart, user friendly and quick.