Jake - when we had 5 people in support it was 4 people on phones and me on
email. We ran some numbers for two months in a row to see how it went.
Conservatively I closed 60% of the support requests for those months, on
average. (Of course, I'm insane - there was the two days I answered a total
over more than 650 emails that had accumulated while I was out for a bit.)
Email is MUCH more efficient for the majority of the questions we get. When
a question becomes niggly then I'd always move it to the phone. But most
of the questions tend to be of the 'How do I do x?' (ie - RTFM style) variety.
You send a quick reply, and it is closed. When you get on the phone people
like to chat, they'll come up with the 'While I have you on the phone, I was
wondering about...' Etc. I even developed a bunch of canned responses for
the real common questions - like lost password, resetting hung telnet, etc.
-MZ
-- Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs Phone: 800-458-9966 510-737-2100 FAX: 510-737-2110 megazone@livingston.com For support requests: support@livingston.com <http://www.livingston.com/> Snail mail: 4464 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588