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When budgeting the cost of a new business system – most organisations focus on the subscription price of the software and the day rate associated with the services required to implement it. Whilst both numbers are important – they are not the most material.
Over the lifetime of your use of any business system – the most significant cost is that of support. In cash terms this was traditionally defined as a % of the licence fee. Now in a SaaS world it is often priced as a premium on the per user per month subscription. The real terms however – the actual cost is defined by the quality of support that your Partner provides.
Poor support is frustrating and demoralising for your staff – and creates real friction within your business. Unresolved issues with the software or your particular deployment can block business processes (invoicing, month end), undermine the integrity of your numbers (stock, WIP) or (often worse) encourage your team to develop work arounds that often become institutionalised. The cost of these things won’t appear on your P&L or balance sheet – but that doesn’t make them less real. Over say five years the costs could become more significant than the initial investment.
Poor support is a function of many variables. The quantity of people that your Partner makes available, the skills and experience of those staff, their relationship with the software vendor – these things all count. They are, however, a function of just one thing. Leadership.
If the leadership of your Partner is committed to delivering great support – this will be anchored in the culture of the business, they will invest the right amount of resource/money and will measure the outcome – customer satisfaction – in the form of a Net Promoter Score (NPS). These businesses will enjoy high levels of referral and recommendation.
If the leadership of your Partner is focussed on the next deal they are going to close – this too will be anchored in the culture of the business, and they will assign the bare minimum amount of time and resource to their support obligations. These businesses will experience high levels of “churn” - where customer move away from them – but spend relatively little time worrying about it.
Where is the leadership of your current Partner focused?
How Can TSG Help
NPS scores are calculated by asking customers a very simple question. Given your recent experience with TSG (their support call) would you recommend us to family or friends. They are invited to score you from 1 (no) through to 10 (yes). You take the % of 8/9/10 responses and deducted the % of 1,2,3 responses. The worst possible result is –100. The best possible result is +100.
TSG serves 1600+ clients. We have 90+ staff permanently assigned to supporting them. We invite every customer to score our response to every support call. Over the last 12 months we have averaged 84.
If you believe that your quality of support your current Partner provides is costing you money – please fill out a form below.
