Technical Support - Cause and Effect

It so happened that I am closely associated with the development of new and support for existing Internet projects of the company in which I work, and also I am responsible for everything related to technical issues. Habr has been reading for a long time, but today, for some reason, I wanted to write about what haunts me for so long.
When everything started, the first customers were happy and any call from them seemed so long-awaited that I wanted to immediately satisfy all
their Wishlist, get flattering feedback, thus tickling pride and getting a lot of positive emotions. Then I did not suspect that customer calls and little requests from them would seem like hell to me and I would be scared to look at the phone, in the morning to wake up in horror from the ringtone melody heard, change it every two weeks.
Soon, the lion's share of my time began to eat up communication with people who thought that by ordering a website, all questions about it would be resolved immediately, because they had already paid for his work. Of course, it was stupid not to stipulate all the nuances of subsequent support, but to know where you would fall - straws would be spread.
What did it lead to?

As a result, a year later was:

• many customers who paid for one-time creation, paid only hosting and thought it was all inclusive
• due to the large number of calls with requests and error information, some of them were “lost” and there were repeated calls (yes, the calls did not always lead me to work, it was not always possible to record the request)
• some clients only after a month or two after the creation, bother to visit the site for the first time and find some typo there. If they did it before the delivery of the project, everything would be fine, but it seems to be not good on our part, and there is nothing to take the money for, but there is no time to solve the problem either.
• in addition to the current work, there were always dozens of frozen fixes that were difficult to “urgently” put into the work schedule

Thoughts were constantly busy: how not to forget to do something, and even in time; new customers need to behave differently; need to resolve issues with technical support for existing customers; the client must always be right, so all changes in cooperation should be presented in a pleasant way.
As a result, I decided to compile statistics on all clients who, with enviable regularity, wished me good morning and sometimes good night. And he began to work on each of the points:

• determined the average amount of work for each of them
• counted the cost per hour of work of one person
• from the previous two points I received the cost price of the technical support of the client, added a 30-100% mark-up (depending on solvency), rounded off the amount
• in a subsequent urgent request, in order to dilute the bitter pill of paid technical support, I inform you that since this is very urgent, I will definitely do it now, but next time we will solve the issue on a paid basis, and discuss the conditions at the first appeal.

Now the most interesting thing for me is a discussion of the conditions of paid technical support and the argumentation of its necessity. For consideration, I offer several options:

1. Monthly paid technical support. Payment is made monthly, you can call, ask how are you doing, ask to make “letters on the right in the bigger column”, consult on any matter related to our activity. Plus - an additional permanent income from those customers who can take 1-2 hours every six months, which are paid in any case.
2. One-time support. Any change / addition is paid upon appeal by the hour. In principle, any wishes are accepted, because the work will be paid.
3. Global changes do not concern technical support: adding a section to a site, changing a design, etc. questions refer to additional work and are paid separately under a separate contract.

As arguments about the need for technical support, I use:

1. The speed of response to any request. At a minimum, the presence of an error will be checked as quickly as possible and the verdict will be delivered: deadlines, possible problems.
2. Any work should be paid for, especially if you need a quality result, and not the go-ahead that you did, check it yourself, because it’s too lazy to do it.

So far this process continues, but the result has surpassed itself. Many fully agree to such conditions, and did not pay, because no one spoke to them about it. Those who do not want to pay, most likely are willing to put up with shortcomings that can be eliminated, but there is no money for that. Such companies are likely to resort to one-time paid changes in the future, which I hope very much.
For myself over the last year I made a lot of conclusions:

• kindness and naivety are the worst enemies of successful business management (this does not mean that you have to be evil and cynical :))));
• the lack of economic education and management skills makes you aware (reading books and articles helps);
• I will try to enter with all the old and new customers binding contracts for technical support, as well as write out acts of work performed (or maybe I will not plant a bunch of papers);
• collect and classify the main reasons for the treatment of our customers, eliminate them and try to prevent them in the future.

')
All with the upcoming holidays and I want to be sure next year to become not only a year older, but more experienced and happier))

PS And what do you offer your customers in terms of technical support and how do you argue its necessity?