A steady drip of small requests
A client on a maintenance plan emails the developer who built their site: can you update the opening hours, swap the banner image and add a new team member. Another emails the studio owner directly: the contact form has gone to spam again. A third phones to ask if a new landing page is covered by the plan.
Each request is handled by whoever received it. Time is logged sometimes. At the end of the month, nobody knows which clients used their support allowance, which went well over, and which never used it and might question the plan at renewal.
Why support time is never tracked
- Clients email individuals rather than a shared address, so requests are scattered.
- Small jobs feel too small to log, especially when they take ten minutes.
- The allowance per plan is written in the proposal, not anywhere the developer can see it.
- There is no clear line between a support request and new work, so everything is treated as support.
- Clients cannot see their usage, so they assume everything is included.
The plan promises a set amount of help. Without tracking, it quietly becomes unlimited help.
What untracked support costs
Some clients use far more than their plan covers and the studio absorbs it. Developers are interrupted by requests that bypass any prioritisation. New work, such as landing pages, slips into support time instead of being quoted. At renewal, clients who never saw a report ask what they are paying for.
The support desk we build
- Clients send requests to a single support address or a short form, and each request becomes a ticket linked to the client and their plan.
- Emails sent to individual developers can be forwarded to the desk in one click, so nothing gets lost.
- Tickets are triaged as support within the plan, a fault, or new work to quote.
- Developers log time on the ticket as they work, with a timer or a quick entry.
- Each client's allowance and usage for the month is shown on the ticket, so the developer can see when a client is near their limit.
- Clients get a simple monthly summary of requests handled and time used, and can see open tickets on a link.
- Requests classified as new work go to the project manager to quote, instead of being done under support.
| Request | Classification | Counts against plan? |
|---|---|---|
| Update opening hours | Support | Yes |
| Contact form emails not arriving | Fault | Depends on your terms |
| Swap a banner image | Support | Yes |
| Build a new landing page | New work | No, quoted separately |
If you already use a help desk such as Freshdesk, Help Scout or Zendesk, we connect it to your plans and time tracking instead of building a new one.
Support you can see
Requests arrive at one place. The developer on support duty picks up tickets in order, logs time as she goes, and can see that one client is close to their monthly allowance. When that client asks for a new landing page, the ticket goes to the project manager, who sends a quote. At the end of the month, each client gets a summary, and at renewal the history shows what the plan delivered.
Is your maintenance support leaking?
- Clients email developers directly with requests.
- Support time is logged inconsistently or not at all.
- Nobody knows which clients go over their allowance.
- New work is regularly done as support.
- Clients do not receive a summary of support used.