Quantifying the value of customer support

Fri Feb 15 22:49:13 UTC 2013

You need to talk to your marketing/sales department and have them figure 
out how many existing clients you would retain by maintaining the 
current level of service, how many clients you would lose with lower 
quality of service, and how many clients you would attract with better 
service.  From that, you can figure out a rough ROI for your department.

This isn't a fundamentally technical question, it's a marketing & sales 
one.   You can have the best service ever, but if your company is unable 
to attract or retain clients (whether due to your company's PR 
reputation, market saturation, or whatever), it doesn't matter.

- Pete

On 02/15/2013 05:15 PM, Kasper Adel wrote:
> Thanks everyone for the feedback.
>
> Can someone give an example on how i can calculate $ value from improving a
> product/service usability and servicability? I am trying to categorize what
> we offer :
>
> 1) Improve customer experience
> 2) Reduce service deployment time
> 3) Improve service availability
>
> Regards
> Kim
>
> On Friday, February 15, 2013, Siegel, David wrote:
>
>> There is no such thing as a generic business case that can be applied
>> across all companies in an industry.  Every business is unique in its
>> product definition and organization structure, but each question is also
>> unique and therefore the analysis must be done every time.
>>
>> The way to begin is to ask this manager what he believes the possible
>> outcomes are (downsize your group, eliminate your group, re-define your
>> group, etc.) and then work with each of the key stakeholders that you have
>> to estimate the impact of those outcomes.  For example, if 1st line
>> operations indicates that eliminating your group would result in decreased
>> customer satisfaction and missed SLA's, ask them to quantify it as much as
>> possible and go to take the numbers back to your business people to have
>> them estimate the impact on revenue.
>>
>> The analysis should be constructed and presented in standard finance terms
>> (like NPV) so I would suggest that you make friends with someone in finance
>> to assist you with the preparation.  You can also take a short two-day
>> course like this
>> http://executive.mit.edu/openenrollment/program/fundamentals_of_finance_for_the_technical_executive/16that will teach you how to build up these analysis yourself (I have taken
>> the one referenced and I recommend it to all managers with budget
>> responsibility).
>>
>> The outcome from these discussions often has surprising but positive
>> outcomes for everyone...maintaining the status quo is not always the best
>> possible outcome despite the biases we usually have when we begin the
>> analysis.  :-)  If you work closely with all of your stakeholders, everyone
>> will learn and benefit from the experience.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kasper Adel [mailto:karim.adel at gmail.com <javascript:;>]
>> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:16 PM
>> To: Andrew Latham
>> Cc: NANOG list
>> Subject: Re: Quantifying the value of customer support
>>
>> I used to think that these kind of situations take place when a manager
>> was never an engineer so he does not understand how things work but i was
>> surprised when i faced these from managers with an intense engineering
>> career so i gave up on trying to give conceptual excuses and want to just
>> give them the dump tables and numbers that they are looking for.
>>
>> Kim
>>
>> On Thursday, February 14, 2013, Andrew Latham wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Kasper Adel
>>> <karim.adel at gmail.com <javascript:;><javascript:;>>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> We are a 2nd level of escalation in a service provider, trying to
>>>> put a $ value on the support we give to our NOC and other
>>>> implementation teams, when they email us about problems they face.
>>>> But we are merely bits and bytes engineers that cant quantify and
>>>> justify the value of what we do to the management team. I guess
>>>> these smart suits want to see an excel sheet with a table of how
>>>> much they save or gain by the support we do. We
>>> respond
>>>> to technical questions and simulate problems in a lab.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone help me with an idea or any material i can reuse? Templates?
>>> Has
>>>> any one been in a similar situation.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Kim
>>> Kasper/Karim/Kim
>>>
>>> Your job is customer retention.  Your value is maintaining all company
>>> income.  Write the yearly revenue on a piece of paper and hand it to
>>> them.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ~ Andrew "lathama" Latham lathama at gmail.com <javascript:;><javascript:;>
>>> http://lathama.net ~
>>>