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Charging for Support (what do you do?)


Si

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Late thread - but going to chime in here anyhow.

 

We utilize Kayako simply for this reason.

We have a unique product - hosting - but still unique

being non-profit and offering services to non-profits only...

 

We have a few support plans / levels

in short - we have level 1 which is faq / knowledge base and forum support only.

Level 2 - 12-24 hour response / resolution

Level 3 - 0 - 12 hour response / resolution

 

What we had to do is build a number of SLA plans within the Kayako system - it does however work well once the system is setup.

 

We lost a few clients when we implemented this - but most interestingly enough have come back ...

 

If you offer a superior product in a niche market then this is worth doing - if not... it might be worth just partnering w/ another company and letting the clients know their accounts have been migrated over to a provider that can handle their support needs.

 

I did this a while back as well - long before I started this non-profit for church only content management software as a service thing... :-)

 

In short - think about it this way.

 

If you can grab an affiliate account with another company -

and you can migrate the clients over to that company -

you will still get a monthly / quarterly check - and actually turn a profit off of the client since they are not costing you in support.

 

I admire what your doing - offering a great product and trying to offer the best level of support possible... It is a balance thing.

 

All clients sadly are not right (been on both sides of the fence there personally)

All clients will not allow you to turn a profit.

All clients are either assets or liabilities ...

 

the minute (in the business world) a client becomes a liability - and you cannot work them back to being an asset - it is best to move them along - (especially if you can do so as an affiliate.)

 

Clients that do not receive the support they want/need will only badmouth you...

If you do this in a gentle way - you can make yourself come out on top - you are after all "doing this for their best interest"

 

I once heard - its all in the manner of delivery ... I think that is so true...

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Hi,

 

What we are about to start doing thanks for Matt and his excellent coding.

 

We have a product that is "IT Support Call" this is priced as we need. This product can only be purchased with credit there for user have to be in credit in order to log IT Support calls.

 

Once the user has purchased this it then uses action hooks to create a ticket with the custom fields for this product already in.

 

It goes straight to our IT Support team and hey presto chargable support!!

 

Hope this helped :)

Niall

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There currently isn't a way to create a new ticket with the API.

 

You can however, use PHP to mail the specific department's e-mail and that should open a new ticket.

 

The action hooks only allows you to execute code when specific events occur. In this case, you will want to use the actionhook_InvoicePaid() function.

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I guess if Matt is going to modify the API to allow you to create new tickets, then I'm sure it will work.

 

It's nice to see Matt implement features like this on the fly. Really makes me feel confident WHMCS is going to be a long term solution to our billing problems.

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I totally agree!

 

The support given By Matt/Joe and the team is amongst the best customer support I have ever dealt with.

 

Yes I have a team of coders and designers etc, I run my company I dont get my hands dirty but I feel totally comfortable with getting Matt to code for us as you know he knows the system inside out and if he cant do it no one can!!

 

WHMCS rocks!

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