Loading...
Answers
MenuAre there standard ratios that are used to calculate first level support staff needed for a SAAS product that is a non-technical product?
This question has no further details.
Answers
Hi. I'm a Business Intelligence consultant with most of my customers being call centers.
There are definitely guidelines you can apply but it will be based on several factors. Your question references ratios, which I assume means you would like to know how many agents per customer. That number will vary greatly depending on a number of other factors including:
-what is your ASA target (Average speed of answer)?
-what percentage of calls should meet the ASA?
-are their penalties below a certain threshold (if less than 80% of calls meet ASA in 24 hours, for example)
-how long are calls waiting when they don't meet ASA?
-what is the call distribution by day of week, time of day and holiday v. non-holiday.
-what is the average call duration?
-what is the % of calls requiring escalation or call back versus calls resolved on first contact?
To simplify it though, the two most important (IMO) will be call volume and your target for ASA (assuming you aren't answering then putting them back on hold, etc).
To simplify though, the top 3 are: ASA, Call length and call volume. Regardless of the size of customer base.
A good reporting system that combines live metrics and daily/weekly/monthly analysis will help a great deal.
Feel free to set up a call if you'd like to talk about this in more detail.
I have been involved in several saas projects. I still work with one of them. I have not found any standard ratios. It really depends on several factors including how intuitive is the product? How mission critical is the product to the subscribers daily workflow? What is the learning curve? What is the adoption rate? What is the average customer aptitude for your product, etc?
I can tell you that one client manages about 150 subscribers with one part time support person. I also have a contact that provides web hosting and manages about 800 hosted clients with one full time support person. But, te variables really skew these numbers.
If you would like to discuss this further at no charge, I offer a free 30 minute call to first time callers. Use this link.
https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult
Best regards,
Kevin McCarthy
www.kevinmccarthy.com
Related Questions
-
Good resources for structure/flowchart of an onboarding & ongoing support process?
I've helped lots of SaaS companies improve their onboarding processes over the years, but I just published my best (high-level) piece on doing this right: http://sixteenventures.com/customer-onboarding The bottom line is (though I suggest reading the entire article) you need to know what success looks like for your customer - what their Desired Outcome is - and then reverse engineer the steps necessary to get there. Going through that process will reveal the steps necessary to get them to that Desired Outcome outside of the product; we're not talking about functional steps within the product yet. Map this out using flow charts, line lists, mind map, white board, etc. The tool isn't important as much as doing this right. Now, once you understand the process required to move them from Step 0 - deciding to take action to reach their desired outcome to Step z - achieving their (at least initial) Desired Outcome, you can start laying out, designing, and building the in-product processes necessary to achieve those success milestones and ultimately, their Desired Outcome. You should then peg your email (or other lifecycle messaging) flow to those success milestones (rather than doing a timed follow-up), where each message is sent like this: "have they done this milestone? yes, then send this message to get them to the next one." Since each user and customer will achieve success on their own cadence, it's best to not have a timed autoresponder sequence but to actually trigger based on milestones reached. The good news is that this is relatively easy to do given the availability of lifecycle messaging services. See this post for more on this topic: http://sixteenventures.com/email-follow-up-sequence Hopefully this helps, but if you want more details or - more importantly - want to figure out how to apply this thinking directly to your situation, request at least a 15-minute call with me.Lincoln MurphyLM
-
How do you build a MVP for an innovative tech b2b product? We would need good amount of funding to build a decent MVP and show businesses.
The idea of an MVP is 'minimum, viable' ... If you feel you need a "good amount" of funding, I would challenge if you are minimum enough. Obviously, without knowing the details of your product, your ideal customer, or what need you will solve, it is hard to help expose what is necessary in an MVP and what is a Phase II or Phase III feature. I am happy to help you work through this, or answer specific questions, to get you rolling. Just book a call with some times that will work for you. Regardless, I would love to know more about it and how it goes after launch. To your success, -ShaunShaun NestorSN
-
Is it possible to pre-sell and enterprise grade saas product without building it? Ie with design only?
Yes, I did exactly that a few years back. A friend of mien and I launched a site with minimal functionality that was really just a landing page. We offered the opportunity to pre-buy a year's subscription to the service by allowing users to set their own pricing. Within the first 24 hours of the site going live, we had enough paying customers to validate the business and inform our iterative development cycle. Ultimately, we decided it wasn't a big enough business for either of us to get really excited about but it proves that it can be done. I also did that in my current business with a landing page that generated literally thousands of leads and hundreds of very qualified customers, which resulted in paid pilot contracts before the software was fully built. Build something that people actually *need* and you'd be surprised at what they're willing to do to get early access to it. Happy to talk about it in a call in more detailTom WilliamsTW
-
How to find custom business application development projects (CRM, ERP, accounting software) etc?
You are facing a classic chicken and egg problem. You want premium projects but cannot get them because you haven't done any yet. To solve this, you need to think from your target customers standpoint. Why would a customer buy from you? What do you offer that others don't have? Once you define that, the second thing you need to understand is how companies acquire their services. The buying process in a company is different from consumer buying cycle. So you need to figure out how you will play this dance. Lastly, to acquire customers, you will need to do some marketing and network. LinkedIn would be a good starting point. Another option would be to start out small and bid for projects on oDesk, Guru or other similar sites All the best.... Happy to talk if you have more questions.Dilip DandDD
-
Is it foolish to post a Kickstarter campaign for a SaaS that is primarily for businesses (not consumer oriented)?
It's not foolish, but it's going to be extremely hard to pull it off. I would consider starting with a beta program so you can have some paid clients to pay for the company's expenses. After you have some traction, you can raise a seed round.Rui DelgadoRD
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.
