Does anyone have any (positive..) experiences with outsourcing support? What caveats should we look out for? Thanks!
1. Add the expensive price of people sitting by the phone to the proposal. After marking it up with a healthy profit, of course.
2. Move on to the next proposal.
Whatever the potential client says they want should be included in the proposed fee. With a nice profitable markup,of course. The alternative is to buy the job at a loss and make up for it on volume...which, isn't exactly the snarky response it seems to be if the staffing cost of 24/7 support can be amortized over several projects in parallel.
An alternative is to have regular staff on call to perform tech support as a collateral responsibility.
But in the end, a requirement to provide 24/7 tech support may indicate contracts that are a poor match for your firm and ought not to be pursued so that work that meets your firm's capabilities can be pursued.
Good luck.