Technical Support Costs $4.1 Million Per Company

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August 03, 2004 (11:23 AM EDT)

Technical Support Costs $4.1 Million Per Company

Technical support can cost a typical large enterprise as much as $4.1 million in lost productivity as workers ring up for help when they should be working, said a tech outsourcer Tuesday.

Siemens Business Services, a division of the German electronics giant, commissioned the end-user survey, which polled workers on the time they spent each week with in-house technical support.

More than a third -- 36 percent -- of the U.S. white-collar workers surveyed said that they spend 30 minutes or more each week on the phone with their company's technical support service. Another 20 percent blew an hour or more each week, and in the "Believe It Or Not" category, five percent reported that they were on the phone with the help desk five hours or more each week.

"Maybe some of that five percent didn't really spend five hours on the phone, but they perceive that they did," said Carol Wallace, the director of marketing for Siemens Business Services. "And in tech support, perception is reality. If they think they're on the phone for hours, that's bad in itself."

The $4.1 million was calculated using the U.S. Department of Labor's $24.95 per hour cost to employ a white-collar worker, with a firm with 5,000 such employees.

The numbers, Wallace said, demonstrate the importance of enterprise tech support.

"It may sound boring, but the quality of tech support is really a good indicator of overall IT health," she said. "If your company doesn't have tech support right, you probably have a lot of other IT problems."