Just curious, IBM managed a lot of technology on the cost per head. Is this a strong consideration for CS departments. For those who manage CS is there a size where it becomes easier to make technology investments.
@Scott Smith interesting question. Coming from a technical support ops background, we calculate the operational cost per head that includes technology as well (license, renewal costs etc...). I'm talking about an inbound tech call center having 500+ people receiving 2000+ calls per day. For example, Salesforce, Coveo, Genesys, workforce management tool costs. The tech enables scale and is the lifeblood of the call center, hence its cost and reliability are very important. The goal here is cost savings. I haven't seen CS teams do this kind of calculation in my org. Adding to @Melissa Logothetis , I'd say, unless we've operationalized CS across tens of CSM's, I'd say that CSM tech should be looked as an investment into retention. For example, if I put a unit value of 1 on a CSM, may be 0.1 or 0.2 of that might come from tech - for high touch. For low and tech touch, it could be a little more like 0.3 or 0.4 of that 1 unit.
Interesting idea. I'm sure with some tools where there is a license fee per user this is a huge concern. For other products I think the overall value you expect to gain (ie time savings) are important considerations.