One of the things you will hear me talk about all the time is selling a support contract with every system that you sell. If you are not selling a support contract, you are walking away from every sale and leaving thousands of dollars on the table. A support contract isn’t meant to be a way of milking good customers out of more money, it is designed to be an affordable support agreement between you and your client that assures the client that their system will be taken care of over an extended period of time at essentially a fixed price.

This relationship is good for the customer because they know you will be there to support their system, and its good for you because it locks the customer to you for an extended period of time and provides you with a recurring revenue stream. What seems to be stopping most people from selling a support contract is not knowing what should be in one and the definitive answer to this most elusive question is “it depends”.

What I mean by that is that it really depends on the level of service you want to provide and how much you customers are willing to spend. While today’s modern IP PBX systems can be very simple to use and make basic changes to, customers are accustomed to the phone system being some kind of cryptic black box on the wall that they are afraid to touch. Seeing as how that isn’t the case today, it really is up to you if you are going to let your customer touch the system or not.

Let’s take a look at the different types of work that goes into maintaining a phone system over the long term.

System Maintenance

Basis system maintenance generally consists of operating system updates, PBX software updates, checking log files for issues, checking available disk space, and generally maintaining the health of the system.

MAC (Moves/Adds / Changes)

Moves, adds, and changes are the most common work performed on a phone system. This includes changing extensions, adding/removing employees, changing voicemail passwords, and basic extension level changes. This is usually the first thing that a client wants to start doing themselves in order to do things on their schedule and save from having to open a support ticket to get a simple change done.

Preventive Maintenance

Having a disaster recovery plan is never a bad idea and deciding how far to take this is purely a cost issue. At the most basic level, automated backups can help get a system back online in a reasonable time frame with usually only a few days of lost voicemails. This can be taken even further with plans in place for replacement hardware, standby servers, and even redundant circuits. At minimum you should provide some form of backup service, preferably off-site.

Emergency Service

While we hope there are never emergencies, every system will fail eventually and failures never tend to happen at really convenient times. Defining what an emergency is can also be a little tricky. I usually consider anything that is preventing calls from being processed as an emergency. The HR person forgetting to call you on Friday to setup a new person who starts Monday morning does not generally constitute an emergency in my book. For me, emergencies typically involve either the trunks being down or the server itself being down. I generally do not include emergency support in most support contracts except if the customer has paid from some form of premium support package since emergencies can not be handled on your own schedule.

Putting Your Support Contract Together

Given the different types of service that can be performed on a system over the course of the year, you may want to offer two or three different packages for your clients to choose from. A very basic support contract may include local backups, OS updates, and Software updates while a comprehensive support contract may include everything from off-site backups to moves/adds/changes, to even same day hardware replacement. You have to really look at what your typical workload is, what your response time can be, and how quickly you want to reply to change requests. Let’s take a look at a few typical support packages that you might offer, you can adjust these as needed as they are just basic examples.

Basic Support Package
Operating System Updates
PBX Software Updates (within any specific software assurance policy)
Weekly backup of system config and voicemails within the local network

Standard Support Package
Operating System Updates
PBX Software Updates (within any specific software assurance policy)
Weekly backup of system config and voicemails off-site server
Free Email Support
1 hour of month of support (MAC, Training, etc)

Premium Support Package
Operating System UpdatesPBX Software Updates (within any specific software assurance policy)
Weekly backup of system config and voicemails off-site server
Daily backup of voicemails to local network
Free Email Support
MAC requests handled withing 4 hours
2 hours of month of support (Training, etc)

Since the hourly rates that people charge vary dramatically across the country, trying to put suggested prices on these packages is next to impossible, you really need to base it on the amount of work involved and what you are currently charging your customers as well as the size of the system. A Premium Support package for a 5 station install is going to cost you far less time per month than it would for a 50 station install.

Billing

How you handle the billing is entirely up to you, I personally prefer quarterly billing since it cuts down on our labor costs to invoice every month but is often enough that it doesn’t come into question. Doing yearly billing is nice for that big fat check at the beginning of the year, but if you have had a lot of issues with that client, by the end of the year you feel like you are working for free. It also is easier for a client to cancel a yearly contract since they aren’t used to paying it on a regular basis. I will also suggest adding an automatic renewal into the contract so every year you simply send them an updated contract and keep the billing going. It doesn’t take too many support contracts going to really help stabilize your business.

The Devil is in the Details

Once you have your support contracts put together, I highly recommend having your lawyer look over them real quick and make sure you aren’t missing and important wording and that you have enough detail to make it a valid contract. You don’t want to get stuck in a battle with a customer because your contract was vague or was missing some important detail. I actually had a client call one day when their system was down screaming at how my support contract listed next business day replacement of hardware. What they had failed to read was that the contract had expired 18 months before they called me. So it is very important to spell out exactly what you will be performing, the turnaround time they can expect, and the start and end dates of the contract.

Summary

Support contracts can, and should, be an important part of your business revenue, done right, both you and your clients all benefit. I hope this has helped you to think about how you will put together your own support contracts and that it has shown you how valuable having support contracts with your clients can be.