We Need Cheap Overnight Tech Support

Members of the ISP-Tech list discuss the true value of overnight technical support. Be sure to consider all your options before splashing out money on new hires for odd hours.

[December 27, 2002]

On the ISP-Tech list in December, CS asked:

"I am getting pressure from the higher ups to extend tech-support hours. We are a dialup ISP with some broadband and currently have about 10,000 users. Currently our live support is 8 AM to 12 midnight Mon. through Fri., 10 AM to 6 PM Sat., and closed on Sunday. We are also closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's day. All our systems are monitored 24/7. Our call logs indicate that we receive very few calls after 10 PM and seldom are there more than a couple of calls on our machine in the mornings when we come in.

Frankly it seems to me that going to 24/7 is a unnecessary waste of money, I think the company would be hard pressed to produce an ex-customer who cancelled because we didn't have 24/7 support. Basically I think they want it because 'that's what the big boys do' rather than because of a real need. Opinions?"

[JM replied] "That's fine and dandy. I live in a small town, work at a grocery store. Open 24/7 but on Thanksgiving until 4 PM only, and closed Christmas (but the Stock Crew comes in at 10 PM that night). I am a spiritual person but the moment I requested Sundays off everyone else became spiritual as well. I work split shifts, irregular hours, and don't even get $8 an hour. I come home, put in another 6 to 8 hours (some times more) admining my wife's Web server, answering e-mails she can't answer. I complie and install software, perl modules, review php and perl code. So, um, welcome to the real world. I don't want that to sound harsh, but execs in other industrys have have wasted money for years, or just gotten greedy. It was bound to hit the IT field sooner or later."

[GE said] "Go for it. Having an overnight person, even for a few weeks, can get a lot accomplished. In between calls, that overnight person could be doing server and network maintenance, cabling work, inventory, backups, security work...the list goes on. Put a midlevel person on the overnight, load'em up with stuff to do, and turn'em loose."

[GC disagreed] "We also have approximately 10,000 users and we do a 7x24 help desk. Late night calls are not common and most can be deferred until the next day. There's not that much that the overnight person can do. I'd bet that our help desk staff would willingly go on standby to keep from the long boring overnighters that they currently do. I don't have any control over hours of operation for our help desk, as you may have figured out. I just know we have a good help desk and even so, waste their time and talent most nights. I'd rather shuffle them back to prime hours where their talent is needed."

[SY said] "We have in the neighborhood of 50,000 users (if I am not mistaken), including commercial accounts. There was talk about three years ago of increasing our residential dialup support hours beyond our current 8 AM to 10 PM, Mon. to Fri.; 9 AM to 10 PM Sat., and 9 AM to 5 PM Sun. There are, and were, about 35 techs, including supervisors. The company decided that the expense of hiring more techs and supervisors was not worth the return on investment (ROI) so the move was never made.

The Network Control Center is manned 24/7, though they mostly do network monitoring or repair and commercial account support. To find out if there was a need for expanding support hours, they had after hours residential calls routed to them. The number of calls received was so minimal that the decision to not offer 24/7 residential support was reinforced by this data. If I recall correctly, they averaged about 2 calls nightly.

I would suggest that before you 'officially' expand your hours, you try running a test with one person working over night for a period of time. Make sure that all calls are logged. Then use that data to make a decision. You could also keep track of your overnight RADIUS logs and see how many people are logged in, the quality of the connects, etc. You might even consider polling your users about how many people really need help in that small eight hour time span. I would say probably none, but each user base is a bit different."

[GG said bluntly] "24/7/365 ? I do it but I don't get bent out of shape about it if I can't. We charge $20 a month for dialup. That works out to about $.77 a day per customer. What do you think the customer would do for you for $.77?"

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