Question

Topic: Other

Reintroducing Clients To Charge Per Incident

Posted by Anonymous on 11/28/2008 at 1:50 PM ET 250 Points
What is comes down to is essentially this;

There is in place a "per incident" charge for telephone emergency support services for our clients. (Keep in mind - if the error or problem is on our side - we take care of it free on charge and offer free email support for the length of the client relationship - we also strive to answer them asap). The problem is - the per incident charges - really haven't been enforced. Therefore - our clients call us frequently with questions that could easily be solved on their own (or with the help of our manuals etc.). Our business is growing and this is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with.

I was hired recently and have we have been attempting to restructure this process to make it easier to track and to retrain our people to begin actually tracking it, and charging for it. Otherwise we are wasting valuable time.

Any suggestions on how to make this a smooth transition for our clients - who have essentially been receiving free "chargeable" support for several years but to whom we must retrain to accept our existing policy. How do we enforce this gently?

Any ideas would be appreciated greatly.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 11/29/2008 at 9:28 AM Accepted
    Gift existing clients with a certain number of free incident reports. Each time they contact you, the tech person can say (for example): "Oh Mr. Smith, after today you'll have 3 free incident reports for your account." When it gets down to 1, you can offer to upsell them an incident report package (buy 5 get 6 free, for example).
  • Posted on 12/3/2008 at 11:34 AM Author
    Good advice - all of it.

    Bill - I have some things to consider. We generally try to avoid putting calls into a queue - or even allowing them to go through to an automated system at all. We like them to have direct contact with a person instead of a service - but it is certainly something to think about. Perhaps when they are on hold...

    Conrad - I think the main reason that it hasn't been enforced is because - for the most part - our people are just way too nice. A good thing in and of itself - but they are being taken advantage of. Keep in mind that this charge is only applied when they (the client) call it in to us directly and have us work on it as an emergency or priority item. We will continue to provide free support via email for as long as our customers are with us. We are big on providing customer support and service - we do want them happy. - I really like your idea about the fact sheet.

    Jay - I did consider this idea - just trying to figure out from an admin side how that might be worked out. Great advice.

  • Posted by steven.alker on 12/9/2008 at 7:35 AM Accepted
    Dear Tyler

    If the service agreement has always been included in the contract, but simply not enforced, you could take a two pronged attack to achieve a smooth transition to having clients pay for their self-induced problems. At least get your staff to understand the moral high ground and business case for this – you benefit no one through going bust trying to support people who can’t be mothered to read the instructions!

    I guess that you can determine who your long-standing customers are from your accounts data or, preferably, from your CRM system. Identify these accounts so that when they call in with a problem that the favoured status of their account is immediately visible to whoever takes the call. (Here I’ll be unusually blunt – if you don’t have a CRM system with a customer service facility, doing this is extraordinarily difficult, so get one installed!)

    Write to all your customers explaining that a small number of clients have been misusing your service lines for trivial reasons and though this probably does not apply to the customer in question, you would like to re-iterate the terms and conditions of your service contract.

    To your longest standing customers and / or worst offenders, add the comment that they have X service points available to them (As per Jay’s suggestion) and that they can use them to have their questions answered or problems solved, after which they will, as per the conditions, need to purchase further service points.

    Make it an attractive offer and beef up your FAQ and on-line service facilities so that where possible, they can do it themselves. The beauty of this is that you are accusing no-one directly of misuse and the worst offenders will all assume that you are not targeting them. The language of the letter will be critical, so spend quite some time on getting it right.

    You can even offer an incentive such that they earn service points if they call with a problem which turns out to be down to you.

    You were wondering how to administer such a scheme – the simplest way is to deploy one of the many CRM systems which have a Customer Service facility where service calls can be logged for action and tracked for completion. These (Maximizer for in-house or SalesForce.com or NetSuit for SaaS applications are suitable) The SaaS models are incredibly easy to set up if you hire a consultant to do it and a “Points Bank” can be established which allows points to be deducted from their total, depending on the nature of the query. I used to recommend Maximizer for small and medium service applications, but I am increasingly unimpressed by their own levels of service associated with the latest release.

    Over a period of about 6 months, you will be able to move all existing customers over to the new system whilst establishing a permanent record of how well it is being received on the CRM system. If it is noted that you are losing customers through this, you will know this as a hard fact, rather than as an anecdote and will be able to change your policy accordingly.

    If you already have a CRM system, setting up a service policy with the facility to purchase and use service points takes around 2 to 5 days set-up depending on the system and the complexity of the scheme. I’ve provided a 15 user system for an existing CRM client in about a day an a half of customer configuration.

    NetSuit offers this facility almost out of the box and as it is SaaS, there is only configuration and sharing accounts data to consider – the software is accessed from the company desk-tops via the browser.

    If you want any further information, please don’t hesitate to ask about any of the specifics listed above. This is an excellent question and I know that the responses are being followed by a number of interested parties with almost the same issue!

    Steve Alker
    Xspirt
  • Posted on 12/16/2008 at 11:47 AM Author
    Steve,

    Thank you very much for your response. It was very helpful indeed. You have most certainly given me some things to consider.

    Thanks very much!
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(Other)