4 ms·

Why would hiring 100+ customer support reps be a problem for Microsoft?

MattGaiser 6y ago
1. They would need to be somewhat technical, so they would not be cheap. Let's say $70,000 a piece. 2. It is a free product. Would you spend 7 million a year supporting a free product? 3. 99% of complaints would be of the nature "GitHub is broken. HELP!" and really be some person who did not set the origin before pushing.
- joepie91_ 6y ago
  It isn't a free product. It's a paid product with a free "introduction tier" that helps them capture the open-source ecosystem, so that when your company needs paid services, they are the obvious choice because everyone is using it already. Basically the same deal as "educational licenses" for expensive software suites. It isn't a freebie at all; it's an investment into future customer acquisition through lock-in. That's how you're paying for it.
- c22 6y ago
  They paid $7.5 billion for it so they're already spending much more than that if they keep it running for any less than the next thousand years.
- jen20 6y ago
  > It is a free product. I for one pay for GitHub. I've never had a ticket that wasn't answered in under a day, but I'd be almightily annoyed with them if I submitted a ticked like this and didn't have a response within hours.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  1. They would need to be somewhat technical, so they would not be cheap. Let's say $70,000 a piece. That is roughly the fully-loaded cost to employ a senior software developer in much of the world. A decent but first-line tech support agent would cost a fraction of that amount almost anywhere outside the US. 2. It is a free product. Would you spend 7 million a year supporting a free product? Presumably for the same reasons you spent far more than that to buy and continue to operate the service at all. 3. 99% of complaints would be of the nature "GitHub is broken. HELP!" and really be some person who did not set the origin before pushing. Then 99% of the complaints will be dealt with quickly using standard replies and references to FAQs. These aren't going to be the ones attracting hundreds of comments and presumably thousands more readers on prominent online forums for software developers.
- rhacker 6y ago
  Mostly support is a person getting a hold of someone that can escalate. No technical requirements needed.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    No. Support is a pyramid where each node should try to solve the problems they can before an escalation.
deleted 6y ago
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1. They would need to be somewhat technical, so they would not be cheap. Let's say $70,000 a piece. 2. It is a free product. Would you spend 7 million a year supporting a free product? 3. 99% of complaints would be of the nature "GitHub is broken. HELP!" and really be some person who did not set the origin before pushing.

joepie91_ 6y ago
It isn't a free product. It's a paid product with a free "introduction tier" that helps them capture the open-source ecosystem, so that when your company needs paid services, they are the obvious choice because everyone is using it already. Basically the same deal as "educational licenses" for expensive software suites. It isn't a freebie at all; it's an investment into future customer acquisition through lock-in. That's how you're paying for it.
c22 6y ago
They paid $7.5 billion for it so they're already spending much more than that if they keep it running for any less than the next thousand years.
jen20 6y ago
> It is a free product. I for one pay for GitHub. I've never had a ticket that wasn't answered in under a day, but I'd be almightily annoyed with them if I submitted a ticked like this and didn't have a response within hours.
Silhouette 6y ago
1. They would need to be somewhat technical, so they would not be cheap. Let's say $70,000 a piece. That is roughly the fully-loaded cost to employ a senior software developer in much of the world. A decent but first-line tech support agent would cost a fraction of that amount almost anywhere outside the US. 2. It is a free product. Would you spend 7 million a year supporting a free product? Presumably for the same reasons you spent far more than that to buy and continue to operate the service at all. 3. 99% of complaints would be of the nature "GitHub is broken. HELP!" and really be some person who did not set the origin before pushing. Then 99% of the complaints will be dealt with quickly using standard replies and references to FAQs. These aren't going to be the ones attracting hundreds of comments and presumably thousands more readers on prominent online forums for software developers.
rhacker 6y ago
Mostly support is a person getting a hold of someone that can escalate. No technical requirements needed.
- thephyber 6y ago
  No. Support is a pyramid where each node should try to solve the problems they can before an escalation.

deleted 6y ago

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