Is cloud support 'racing to the bottom?'

December 01, 2011, 11:55 AM — There's a phenomenon that economists describe as a "race to the bottom," where vendors compete by undercutting in price, which leads to a reduction in quality and service. In businesses like airlines, trains, telecoms -- with huge fixed costs -- these downward spirals of service can last for decades because, fundamentally, the clients don't have that much choice. Any vendor foolish enough to offer great service will see their costs go up...and their sales go down. In spite of complaints about lousy service, the customer won't tolerate big price increases.

This makes perfect sense when it comes to consumer tech support. The customer isn't willing to pay much for support, so you've got to keep the calls below $10 each. Which means they've got to be short, even when staffed by the lowest cost people. If you're lucky, 60% or more of your calls will be 12-minute cases of RTFM or PEBCAK. This is the level of support in other words often relegated to "the community" -- which may in actual fact do a better job of providing relevant information than the vendor does. It's not called a race to the bottom in vain: you'll find it in software and cloud vendors alike.

As with everything in business, measurements and incentives directly affect outcomes. If you use the same metrics for developer/partner support team that you do for end-user support, you'll only get substandard outcomes like these:

Vendors, please realize that the most costly partner support in the world costs you less than nothing, because the successful developer in a partner or integrator will increase your sales. Make the incentives for your partner support team different, and have it report into the engineering organization. And all things considered, just abolish level-1 support for your partners. In all seriousness, relegate level-1 to your developer boards, and have all calls jump straight to level-2. Stop messing around: your engineering team may as a matter of fact learn something from outside developers.