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	"Personalizing the Support Relationship" September 10, 2008 Presenter: Roger Melanson Principal, Unifund rogerm@unifundonline.com

Company background: We sell fairly large accounting and HR systems to cities and towns and schools for $70,000 to $300-$400,000. We have small clients (such as school districts) as well as large cities and towns. We generally customize each system for the special reporting requirements of each client, which often vary considerably from state to state. From the perspective of support, it's almost impossible to be an expert in the requirements of each state.

We decided back in 2001 that our mission would be to help our clients achieve peak operating performance. We're always very aware of that goal.

When we sell a new installation, we charge for the first year of support. Then on the anniversary of the first installation, clients get another bill. We also insist that clients should be on the current version.

At any given time, we have 60-70 installations under way. We have a total of 300+ clients in the Northeast.

We install and train in stages. For example, we'll set up the general ledger and purchasing modules early on, and then set up payroll later.

Currently, we generate about $6 million in revenue. 48% of our revenue is recurring, and 40% of that amount comes from support. We've been able to increase our support fees by 5% a year over the past four years without a single complaint. Pricing for support is now 22% of the list price of the software.

In terms of staffing, we have nine "support account managers" (SAMs) who handle all our clients, and we'll be hiring two more soon. There are no other support people. Each of these SAMs handles anywhere from ten to 50 individual clients. We typically get about 150 calls per week, some of which take offline research.

In addition, we have an implementation team of eight "field consultants" who handle installation and initial training, plus two IT people (their main job is to collect detailed information on the client's environment).

Note that we call our customers "clients," which is a way of emphasizing that we sell services as well as products.

Because our SAMs work with the same clients on an ongoing basis, we know a lot about individual clients and their relative knowledge level. We can often anticipate problems even before they occur. This also helps us when someone we know moves to another job—we already have an established relationship.

Our SAMs have enough time to learn each new release in detail, and they can introduce clients to specific new features through a remote demo. If a client isn't currently using a specific feature, the SAM generally won't waste time showing how that feature works.

Having dedicated account managers also eliminates the problem of support people who "lurk behind the queue"—that is, who only take easy calls.

How we started: Four years ago, we had an idea—what would happen if we divided up our clients among our support reps, so clients would always talk to the same person every time they called? Initially, we just divided up accounts among our existing support reps. Everyone got roughly 25 clients. Over time, we moved toward assigning clients to SAMs based in large part on a *compatible style* of working together. When a SAM isn't available, other SAMs are available to take the call—but the majority of clients prefer to wait for "their" support person. When a SAM goes on vacation, they tell clients that it's okay to call if it's a real emergency. There's almost no abuse, and the SAMs don't mind.

We pay attention to several KPIs, primarily to see how individual SAMs are performing. We look for a two-hour turnaround on cases, we do satisfaction surveys on every case, and we look at the number of open cases in the queue.

The SAMs model helps greatly with client retention. We've only lost one client this year. Sometimes we lose clients because a new business manager brings in their own preferred system, so now we draw on our relationships with the office staff to be more proactive.

One of our successes is a budget-year rollover service. We used to get a huge spike in support calls at the beginning of each fiscal year, when clients had to transfer the previous year's accounts to a new budget cycle. We decided that this wasn't really a "support" issue, and so we began offering an appointment-only consultative service for $600-$900. The appointments take anywhere from two to eight hours, and each SAM has a schedule of appointments. Now, 98% of our clients buy this service.

One of the big benefits of this personalized approach is job enrichment. We haven't lost a single person this year, and that's largely because each SAM gets to do a variety of things as part of their overall support job. In fact, individual SAMs go on the road from time to time and spend a day with individual clients.

The financial impact of the SAM model has been terrific. Our cash flow has improved tremendously over the years. We've also reduced the ramp-up time for new support people by 80%, which means that each new hire is productive after only about two months of training. And because the SAMs have such a good relationship, they even get involved in straightening out past-due invoices. We just don't have a receivables problem.

Finally, we recently figured out a better way to handle the handoff from the field consultants to support, which used to be a little rocky sometimes. Now, at the end of the client's training period, the SAM will call and actively manage the transition. We even have a new "Watch Me Work" program that helps the SAM pro-actively identify mistakes that the client might have made (e.g., in the setup process) that will eventually turn into major support problems. We can catch and fix these problems when they're still very small.

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If you'd like to post a comment or question on this discussion, please send a note to Jeffrey Tarter (jtarter@asponline.com).

2008 Calendar

October 8
"The Voice of the Customer"
The annual First Wednesday conference.

We're currently looking for meeting topics and speakers for our 2009 Roundtable programs. If you'd like to offer a suggestion, please contact Jeffrey Tarter at
jeff@first-wednesday.com.