Technical Support and Self-Service Troubleshooting: An Insurance Approach

Abstract: Technical support and services are growing more and more competitive and have become a selling point for many companies. One way companies differentiate themselves is through extensive self-service solutions as a part of the support structure. However, the underlying cost drivers are not well understood. This report explores a new way of pricing technical support through the framework of insurance pricing. The report presents a proposed methodology for fitting a generalized linear model (GLM) to technical support tickets. The methodology is then tested by fitting GLMs to two different companies' ticket data. The results are presented and viability of the method is analyzed. The report also explores ways of utilizing the fitted model to price self-service solutions such as troubleshooting. Lastly, improvements of the data set and methodology are discussed and based on this some future research is suggested. This report is meant to serve as a pilot study and hopefully the suggestions made at the end can be realized.