Every SaaS support team has a question they could answer with their eyes closed. How do I add a teammate? Where is my API key? How do I change my plan? Each one takes a few minutes. None of them feel expensive.
Added up, they are. The cost of repeat support questions hides in the fact that each one is small. This post works through a hypothetical example so you can see the total and do the same sums for your own team.
The worked example
A hypothetical SaaS company with a small support team. The numbers are illustrative.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Support tickets per month | 1,200 |
| Share that are repeat how-to questions | 40% |
| Repeat tickets per month | 480 |
| Average handling time | 6 minutes |
| Hours spent on repeats per month | 48 |
| Loaded hourly cost of a support person | $35 |
| Monthly cost of repeats | about $1,680 |
| Annual cost of repeats | about $20,000 |
That is one year of time spent answering questions the team has already answered hundreds of times.
The costs the table leaves out
The direct time cost is only part of it.
Slower replies for everyone. Repeat questions sit in the same queue as bugs and urgent problems. Every repeat ticket pushes a harder one further back.
Context switching. Answering easy questions between hard ones breaks concentration. The harder problems take longer as a result.
Morale. Support people who spend their days pasting the same answers tend to burn out faster.
Users who never asked. Some users hit the same problem and do not ask. They just leave, and never show up in the ticket count at all.
Want a 24/7 AI Employee for Your Website?
See how SpideyChat can answer customer questions, capture leads and handle enquiries while your team is offline.
Why the questions keep coming
Repeat how-to questions nearly always mean the answer exists but is not found. The article uses different words from the user, is hard to reach from where they got stuck, or is out of date. Fixing those problems, as described in deflecting repeat support tickets without hiding support, reduces volume.
Answering them instantly
The second step is putting answers where users ask. SpideyChat for SaaS companies answers routine how-to questions from your documentation instantly, at any hour, with a clear route to a person when needed. You can compare the plans with the figure from your own table.
In the example, even halving the repeat tickets would save around $10,000 a year in time, more than covering the cost of an assistant, and giving the team back a day a week.
Running your own numbers
You need four figures:
- Tickets per month.
- Share that are repeat how-to questions (tag a sample to estimate it).
- Average handling time.
- Loaded hourly cost of your support team.
Multiply through. If you would rather not build a spreadsheet, the free chatbot ROI calculator does the arithmetic.
The small-company version
For a founder handling support alone, the maths looks different but the conclusion is the same. The cost is not salary but time away from building the product, covered in founder-led support and when it stops working.
The same maths elsewhere
Repeat questions cost every business. Online stores pay for them in lost sales as well as time, as shown in shipping cost surprises and the carts they abandon. And for general tips on cutting repeat emails, see stop answering the same email twice.
Your next step
Tag a sample of last month's tickets as repeat or not, and estimate the share. Run the numbers. If the figure is significant, start with the top ten repeats.