We’ve taken the plunge and are now offering 7–day support for our consumer products (toll-free Monday through Friday, and email support on the weekends). Our tech team did the analysis and came to the conclusion that we can afford to do this move. And actually, it helps, because our techs were spending a good part of Monday catching up on work from over the weekend. Now, the work is more spread out.
A few more notes on our support philosophy: All of our US support is here in the US, right here in Tampa Bay at our headquarters (depending on the circumstances, overseas support is done through in-country distributors or by our European sister company). We’re also won’t do IVR (integrated voice response) type of support. I despise pushing buttons on a phone as a consumer and so do the rest of our techs. We get around it by having call screeners answer the phone so a user will always get a live person who can route them correctly.
I’m not sure how we’re able to do this quality of support with the prices we charge, but it is working so I’m not going to mess with it.
Alex Eckelberry