How much should I charge for a service contract

[rickrms1966]

Hi,

I have a client who has a UC540 along with 18 phones.   The equipment is a year old and they would like to purchase an all inclusive contract from me to maintain the equpment.  Does anyone here know what the going rate is for something like this?  I have no clue.  I would like to bill them on a monthly bases.

Sincerely,

Rick

[cindy toy]

Hi Rick,

You will need to download the Cisco Service & Support Price List and have a look at tab #25 which is the Small Business Services tab for sku and pricing.

Regards,

Cindy Toy

Cisco Small Business Community Manager

for Cisco Small Business Products

www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport

[Dan Lukes]

The URL no longer works and I found no new URL with such kind of information.

[David Trad]

Hi Rick,

I don't know what area you are located, so I wont put any prices forward but just a general suggestion

SBCS Contract:

Purchase an SBS Contract for all 18 phones and 1 for the UC500, this will cover all those devices for a further 3 years. The SBS Contract will not only help the customer, it will help you if in the event you need to call them on behalf of the customer and request support assistance... Not to mention the insurance/warranty part of the SBCS Contract that I like to call it

Your Personal Contract (Pre-Paid):

You can put the client on a per Month/Quarter/Yearly contract where they purchase X amount of hours per month for Adds/Moves/Changes and X amount of hours for technical fault support, in most cases these are grouped into the one pool of hours... 18 Phones would come in at no less then 3 hours per month, they may not use it but it is Pre-Paid and you can put in there a Use-Or-Loose clause as most partners in my neck of the woods do.

Remember that in that being a Pre-Paid service, you can offer a discount for bulk hour purchases, say your going rate is $150 per hour (Arbitrary figure) and they purchase say 5 hours per month from you in Maintenance support, then you can discount that down to say $120 an hour (Or what you deem to be fair an reasonable).

You can also create separate packages such as Bronze package which covers X and Gives Y Hours and Z conditions (I.E After hours support or business hours only) And you then replicate that into a Silver and Gold and maybe even a Platinum packages, each one have their own unique benefits... Diversification in pre-paid cost platforms is always a good thing.

I am sure there is more than one way to peel the label on this bottle, but hey that can be left up to your creativeness

Hope this helps you out in some way

Cheers,

David.

[William Paulsen]

My wife runs a business with about 12 phones and a UC-520 that they bought used about 1 year ago.  With the help of people here on this forum and Cisco Smartnet contract support I eventually got it working.  It seems that the first month will require the most time, and then it's mostly smooth after that, so you should probably do an initial one-time fee for inspection, soft/firmware updates, power backup for the UC and any switches, and any special requests that have been pending. This is a great opportunity to sell them a wi-fi in their office - thell them not just for laptops but their iphones and ipads will work much faster.  Maybe two wi-fis,one for staff and one for visitors.  That's probably about 8-12 hours. You probably need to do this on-site call once a year.  This is common for other maintenance contracts like HVAC and plumbing and lighting.

After the initial setup you will get the forgotten password calls, name changes, how to set a new greeting, etc.  It's much better for you if you can get to the CCA remotely from your home or office or when you are in the field.  My wife has several PCs that run a VNC server which works great for accessing CCA. You really don't want to visit their site too often, since that takes so much time.  So now after 1 year of the UC520 it's not more than 1 hour a month.