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Many of the tiered support offerings from companies also doesn't make sense from a customer perspective. My favorite example is Elatic Co. trying to sell us sup

Many of the tiered support offerings from companies also doesn't make sense from a customer perspective. My favorite example is Elatic Co. trying to sell us support. We want one thing, and one thing only: "When this fails, in a way where we can't fix it using documentation, experience or the support forums", we need to be able to call someone. Everything you're offering below that is useless to us. We just need the phone number in the exceedingly rare case that this break down completely, everything else is not something we'd be willing to pay for. But the "call someone, who knows something" is the final tier, and includes all the things below it and is priced accordingly. Understandably being able to call a developer should be expensive, but when you tier it, then customers feel ripped of, because they have to buy something they don't need, to get that one thing they really do need and are willing to pay for. In our case we where willing to pay some fixed price per year for access to phone support, and then an hourly rate if we called, but that wasn't the pricing structure. In fairness the support structure and pricing from Elastic has improved since then, but the issue is the same, if you only need one thing from the higher tiers, then the pricing doesn't make much sense to you as a customer.

portaouflop 2y ago
Would you prefer they only offer the call option without all the other stuff for the same price? Then you don’t have the problem of paying for things you think you don’t need. Your problem is that you want the highest value (direct on-call team with actual skills is expensive AF) for the budget price - as someone who helped design support tiers this is super common but obviously not economically viable. edit: in any case on that price level the price structure should be more flexible I agree
- mrweasel 2y ago
  This is not exactly how it works, but as a custom you look at the price of the tier below what you want, and the price of the tier which contains what you want. The price difference must be what the feature you want costs. So if the tier with which provides on-call is $100.000 and the tier below that is $75.000, then the cost appears as $25.000 to me as a customer. That not true, when you dig into it, some of the cost is covered by "unused" benefits of the tiers below, so that one benefit on it's own might be closer to $50.000. If you truly don't need the stuff below, then you'd want more flexibility in the price structure and be able to spend the $50.000, rather than the $100.000. Instead the provider now ends up with no sale. > direct on-call team with actual skills is expensive AF More than most realise. My issue is that there are occasions where you don't mind paying for that service, but you're not allowed to, because the tiers are designed so that it becomes more expensive than it should be. I've seen a number of support contracts, where they only tier that actual provides much value is the one where you can call an expert, but that's hidden behind "Call Us" or "Super Premium Platinum" priced such that only governments and VC funded companies can/will pay for it.
mooreds 2y ago
> But the "call someone, who knows something" is the final tier, and includes all the things below it and is priced accordingly. But it is priced accordingly not because it includes all those other things, but because it is dang expensive to provide 24/7 on-call technical support. > In our case we where willing to pay some fixed price per year for access to phone support, and then an hourly rate if we called, but that wasn't the pricing structure. Sure, I get it. Elastic wasn't selling what you want and that stinks. But there's a cost to a company of offering everything ala carte. It makes support more complex (because support staff have to be trained on snowflake clients), makes it harder to sell online (because customers get confused by options and bail) and harder to sell via a sales team (again, complexity). That said, I bet there are Elasticsearch consulting companies who would be thrilled to quote you for on-demand on-call support (googling for "elasticsearch oncall consultant" turns up a few). I'd be interested to hear how their pricing compares.
hodgesrm 2y ago
> We want one thing, and one thing only: "When this fails, in a way where we can't fix it using documentation, experience or the support forums", we need to be able to call someone. Everything you're offering below that is useless to us. I don't doubt your expertise in technology. But there are so few companies that can actually do what you describe that it's not a viable market for vendors. The first problem is that the kind of staff you need when things go really bad are (a) really hard to find and (b) are looking for permanent employment. That's why support vendors want term contracts--it's the only way to make the economics work. The second problem: While you say you just want to call your support vendor when something really bad happens, that's actually the most expensive and least satisfying approach for most users, even very expert ones. Far better to engage before there's a failure, e.g., at design time or during regular health checks. Data base upgrade planning is case in point where early engagement pays off in spades. That includes things as simple as having an expert on-call when the upgrade happens. YMMV. That's at least been my experience from 18 years of supporting open source database software.

portaouflop 2y ago

Would you prefer they only offer the call option without all the other stuff for the same price? Then you don’t have the problem of paying for things you think you don’t need. Your problem is that you want the highest value (direct on-call team with actual skills is expensive AF) for the budget price - as someone who helped design support tiers this is super common but obviously not economically viable. edit: in any case on that price level the price structure should be more flexible I agree

mrweasel 2y ago
This is not exactly how it works, but as a custom you look at the price of the tier below what you want, and the price of the tier which contains what you want. The price difference must be what the feature you want costs. So if the tier with which provides on-call is $100.000 and the tier below that is $75.000, then the cost appears as $25.000 to me as a customer. That not true, when you dig into it, some of the cost is covered by "unused" benefits of the tiers below, so that one benefit on it's own might be closer to $50.000. If you truly don't need the stuff below, then you'd want more flexibility in the price structure and be able to spend the $50.000, rather than the $100.000. Instead the provider now ends up with no sale. > direct on-call team with actual skills is expensive AF More than most realise. My issue is that there are occasions where you don't mind paying for that service, but you're not allowed to, because the tiers are designed so that it becomes more expensive than it should be. I've seen a number of support contracts, where they only tier that actual provides much value is the one where you can call an expert, but that's hidden behind "Call Us" or "Super Premium Platinum" priced such that only governments and VC funded companies can/will pay for it.

mooreds 2y ago

> But the "call someone, who knows something" is the final tier, and includes all the things below it and is priced accordingly. But it is priced accordingly not because it includes all those other things, but because it is dang expensive to provide 24/7 on-call technical support. > In our case we where willing to pay some fixed price per year for access to phone support, and then an hourly rate if we called, but that wasn't the pricing structure. Sure, I get it. Elastic wasn't selling what you want and that stinks. But there's a cost to a company of offering everything ala carte. It makes support more complex (because support staff have to be trained on snowflake clients), makes it harder to sell online (because customers get confused by options and bail) and harder to sell via a sales team (again, complexity). That said, I bet there are Elasticsearch consulting companies who would be thrilled to quote you for on-demand on-call support (googling for "elasticsearch oncall consultant" turns up a few). I'd be interested to hear how their pricing compares.

hodgesrm 2y ago

> We want one thing, and one thing only: "When this fails, in a way where we can't fix it using documentation, experience or the support forums", we need to be able to call someone. Everything you're offering below that is useless to us. I don't doubt your expertise in technology. But there are so few companies that can actually do what you describe that it's not a viable market for vendors. The first problem is that the kind of staff you need when things go really bad are (a) really hard to find and (b) are looking for permanent employment. That's why support vendors want term contracts--it's the only way to make the economics work. The second problem: While you say you just want to call your support vendor when something really bad happens, that's actually the most expensive and least satisfying approach for most users, even very expert ones. Far better to engage before there's a failure, e.g., at design time or during regular health checks. Data base upgrade planning is case in point where early engagement pays off in spades. That includes things as simple as having an expert on-call when the upgrade happens. YMMV. That's at least been my experience from 18 years of supporting open source database software.