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“How To Choose Your 1-800 Provider” or “Please Please Please Sell Us Your Support Calls…”

a fool’s guide to the software industry’s hidden gem: Support Call Monetization

(From an email sent by ShieldApps CEO to ShieldApps clientele, February 2014) 

 

A support call, like most things in life, is a 2-sided coin. To the pessimist it is a bother, a headache, overhead. To the opportunist it is just that – an opportunity.

Before I even get started, this needs to be said; if you belong to the 2^nd part of that title (“Please Please…”) I beg of you – wake up. Preaching to distribution prospects how good your support call monetization is will only get you so far. Man up, take a label of your own, invest some budget distributing your own assets and voilà’ – you are generating your own calls! Waiting for the google/bing calls to come in might flip on you one day, if it hasn’t already.

 

Back to the beginning then… Support Call Monetization, what is it all about? 

There are only a handful of entity types in this game: Software owners, distributers, install monetizers, post un/install monetizers and that’s about it. Each has its own monetization agenda, conversion paths and revenue streams. Some profit from the offers bundled in the install, some profit from the free-to-premium conversion, some from the ads in/out of the software etc.

The common ground though – are the users. The users are going through a process, at the end of which they have the carrier knowingly installed. An asset has been acquired by the software. Real estate. Opportunity.

95% of the users out there, especially the ones to download and install those designated apps are not computer savvy. With that lack of knowledge comes a need. The need for technical support when the time/crisis comes. Opportunity.

So imagine that 95% (not to say 99%) of the daily installs out there (estimated at over 50,000,000/day) are users that have a very good chance to be in a need for some technical help at some point. Who they’re gonna’ call?! (No, not the ghost busters…)

They will call whoever had the brains to present a toll free technical support number to them, daily. Opportunity.

Leaving the financial part to the end, support-wise, you want a toll free number that will be picked up by a technical person that can assist them remotely, instantly. That phone call is what? Opportunity.

Important Note: Technical support call centers make their living from monthly/annual technical support packages sold to computer-none-savvy-users that require technical assistance from time to time. Those users pay a fee, either monthly or otherwise and have a technical assistant remotely connect to their computers – and fix whatever needs fixing.

A few questions need to come up when choosing that partner:

1. Does the call center take ALL calls? (no matter ‘hot’ or ‘cold’) – who deals with the lower end of the calls? Who supports the actual product if this isn’t a potential sales-call?
2. Languages? Does the call center support multi lingual calls?
3. Tracking? Who counts the calls? Reporting? Where and how often? These are not standard ‘place my pixel’ scenarios and you need a good way to track that funnel.
4. Business model: who pays whom, for what, and when…

 

The last one is of course the most interesting part. Several models we have seen so far:

1. You get paid per call. Usually that refers only to the hotter calls that have a chance of generating money.
2. You get paid a revenue-share off the generated sale/s in those calls.

 

One thing you should pay very good attention to; this is your product, your brand and your reputation. With all due respect to prospect partners that will financially contribute to your operation – you need to stand behind your product and maintain your brand’s reputation. That goes to say – no matter who calls in, even if it is a simple support call with no sales potential, it needs to be treated respectfully just as well.  Unfortunately we have seen some ugly cases in which a call was dropped as soon as the call center rep’ flagged that call as sales-pointless. We have even seen some worse cases in which the call center rep’ bad-mouthed the software itself in order to save his/her own sale…

An important note in that regard: do not be lazy. Pick up the phone and fake-call once in a while. What you hear on the other side of that call is what your clients hear when they call.

Given the fact that this business model mixes old school telemarketing and technologies with modern online technologies, both web and software related, there are many more aspects to that choice you are going to make in regards to using that service or not, and if so – with whom?

Feel free to drop us an email, we will be more than happy to guide you through the options and process, recommend the right candidates per-case and refer you to the right contacts. Luckily we are in close touch with the best providers in those niches.

A good cooperation between a software owner and a solid technical support center has shown 250% scale up in user-worth at times. That is too much a difference for you not to check this out 😉