How many support offerings do I need?

I don’t know.

 Really, there’s no magic number! You should have just as many as your customers need and you can sustain with your current resources. So unless your organization is massive you probably can’t offer more than a handful and unless your customers are really all the same you probably need more than one.

Start with the customers: can you group them into logical segments? (Don’t just guess: ask them!) Perhaps you have smaller, budget customers, with limited needs; larger customers who want round-the-clock support; and more demanding customers who need proactive support, not just a number to call when they need help. That would suggest three support offerings: one with business-hours support with a limited number of authorized contact; one with 24×7 support; and one with an account manager to provide the extra level of care for the more demanding customers.

Don’t go overboard with the snumber of support offerings: more is not necessarily better. If customers (and sales reps!) cannot easily grasp the defining features of each offering and how they match their needs, they won’t buy.

Is 24×7 support a requirement?

Maybe.

The success of all support offerings comes back to your customers: what do they need? what do they want? You may have a customer base that simply requires 24×7 support so that it should be included in all support offerings. For instance, if you work under a SaaS model, or your products are typically used in mission-critical environments, you must provide 24×7 support simply to be credible.

Other environments are more flexible and allow shorter support hours. Say you sell appointment software for dentists’ offices. Since few are open at night, a business-day offering may be fine. (In this situation, however, offering extended-hours support or Saturday support may make sense.)

Some enterprise products may not require 24×7 support. Say you sell software for CAD that’s typically used during the day and is considered mission-critical. The majority of your customers would not require nighttime or weekend support so you can offer at least some packages for business-hours support only.