[l-lousy]

“Why did it take you so long to answer my question” , “I just wanted a quick answer why are you charging me for 20 minutes of support”. Human time spent on support is not as cut and dry as hosting resources used, so I imagine it’s easier to not have that discussion. Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much.

[Zenst]

>Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much.

Be less minutes than that I dare say. $20 an hour tech costs, then you have overheads and that's without a profit margin. I'd say 5 mins be more closer to the mark. Really gets down to how many support calls you have as if you have a couple admins who have to dip into a support queue, then their hourly rate would be higher. However if you have a nice frontline 1st line support pool with 2nd and 3rd for escalation model/scale then it will get cheaper.

That all said you have to factor in how much support they use and maybe your average user will need one or two tickets a year and then at the other end you the types who fail to read FAQ's and end up needing more support to use their computer, let alone the service and blur the lines contacting you for an issue that after some back and forth turns out to be the user's end. Those will be costly. So you balance things out - and go with the average and yet at the same time, dread some types of customers.

[pronlover723]

Just price it like Microsoft. $499 per incident.

[UncleMeat]

I'd wager that qualified support staff would get paid well over $20/h. Plus there is all sorts of business overhead.

[kazen44]

from experience, i can tell you high end support far exceeds $20/h (think 3rd level network and systems support). $20/h is more in the 1st line territory.

[h_anna_h]

I presume that you are all talking about SV, right?

[sjcoles]

Nope. Midwest, medium CoL, $18-20/hr to sit and reset passwords all day.

Hell, I am just a sysadmin/developer with minimum experience (2yrs) and make ~$32/hr.

[ufmace]

Keep in mind also that there's probably 2x to 5x overhead between what the customer pays and the paycheck of the person doing the actual work.

[h_anna_h]

Ah, so in the USA. Thanks, got it.

[tracker1]

Not just SV, but almost anywhere in the US at this point I would imagine. I was working support in the Phoenix area back in the mid-90s' and it paid roughly 2-3x minimum wage at that time. While the ratio wouldn't be the same, a lot of places now have a minimum wage in the $9-12 range. Given that, $20/hr+ wouldn't be improbable for first line email/phone support.

[drewzero1]

A couple of years ago I took a break from IT to work first-line support at a local (midwestern) software company. Hourly rate was just a little over that minimum wage range, nothing near $20hr though. I was glad to get it, glad for the experience, and glad to go back to IT when my time was up.

In all fairness, support costs also include all of the techs' phones, computers, networking, software licenses for Teamviewer et al, and office overhead. So a $20/hr bill is pretty cheap for a minimum wage technician.

[simple_phrases]

Tier 3 support makes as much, if not more, than software engineers even outside of tech hubs.