How much do you pay for customer support services?

[Spike87]

Hi all,

Great to be able to post on these boards; I wonder if I might ask a question of you all? I am currently in negotiation with the lead developer of a popular mobile application (featured in editor's picks, top of charts etc.) to provide customer support services. Specifically, these services will include writing FAQs, technical operationa manuals, privacy policies and content for the website/blog posts, as well as compiling bug reports and providing general customer support. I am wondering how much to charge for my services per hour, and I am curious if anyone on this board has ever hired someone to fulfil the above (or similar) tasks. If so, how much would you expect to pay an employee or freelancer (per hour) for these services? I just want to get a feel for the general amount of money expected to cover these services so I can make an informed pitch. I'd be really grateful for any answers to the above question, or any other tips or pieces of advice you might have. Thank you!

 

[overanalyzer]

I haven't had experience providing that particular service, so I'm not sure what the standard rates would be. But I stumbled across this guy's blog a few weeks ago, and he has some great info that's helped me with proposals in general (we do web development), which might be of use for you too.

http://www.bidsketch.com/blog/

He runs the Bidsketch service, which is for writing proposals (and I haven't tried) so there's some marketing/promo stuff for that scattered in the content, but the blog posts really have great info about how to approach writing proposals and setting yourself apart from competitors.

 

[Spike87]

Thanks for the the tip, overanalyzer — that blog looks like it will be useful

Does anyone else with experience of hiring/providing customer service support care to weigh in?

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I wouldn't want to ever pay my customer support person more to deal with one customer than I received from that customer, yet dealing with an individual could take around an hour. If I charged $0.99 for an app, I'd give you about $0.50 per hour. If I charged $19.99 for an app, I'd give you about $10 per hour. One of those prices is a lot more common than the other.

Of course, the reality is only every few hundred purchases result in an hour of customer service needing doing, but I've never run the actual numbers... Thus far I've always decided to handle everything on my own.