Looking for software advice

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Hi all,

I have developed an app in C# and am getting ready to sell it. I am trying
to find metrics for how many service and support calls I should allow under
the monthly service agreement. While I know this is totally off topic I am
wondering if there are any seasoned software people here who can point me in
the right direction.

Thanks
 
Is it a mission critical application? If your software goes down does it
cost the customer a pile of money for each minute it is down? Can you give
us a high level overview of what your app does? How much (order of
magnitude) are you charging for this app? If you are selling it for $20
you'll have an easier time setting that kind of constraint than you would if
you sold your app for $200K. You can probably tell from my response that
the app we support is mission critical and our customers call us as much as
they want and almost anytime they want. Emergency on-site visits even
happen occasionally and usually on our dime. Will your service agreements
also guarantee free upgrades or discounts on upgrades? Who is your target
customer? Multi million dollar corporations? Mom and pop shops? Multi
billion dollar corporations?

Service agreements tend to be a hard pill to swallow (especially for smaller
companies). Think like a customer for a moment, customer pays you to buy
your software then you tell them they have to pay to call you and get
support for what they bought. In their mind they are basically saying if
your SW is broken I should be able to call and have you tell me how to fix
it. Reality is there are any number of things that may be non-software
related causing the problem.

If you can answer a few of the above questions, maybe I can comment or point
you to some resources that that discuss industry standards.
 
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