Support demand grew at 11% in the past year, and we anticipate that demand will continue to grow for most companies but at a slower rate. Support demand growth stems from positive factors: new customers and more proactive engagement; and negative factors: low product quality.

Your understanding of how demand for Support will change is critical to planning, both short-term and long-term.

Support Trends

Growth is reported by 59% of companies primarily due to positive factors such as new customers, more proactive engagement, and negative factors including product quality issues.
Some (13%) companies report lower demand – some due to product quality improvements and sometimes for negative reasons including fewer customers, churn, or disengagement.

Support Demand Trends 2019 – 2023

Source: ServiceXRG State of Support 2023

Factors that contribute to high growth in Support demand include:

• Aggressive sales and marketing initiatives to add more customers
• Proactive customer outreach to drive adoption
• Changes to products that introduce more complex capabilities
• Declining quality of product (more issues)
• Little to no effective efforts to prevent support demand or increase customer self-sufficiency

Support Demand Drivers

Source: ServiceXRG State of Support 2023

Declining Support demand influencers

Factors that contribute to a reduction in Support demand include:

• Loss of customers (churn)
• Customer disengagement—they own the product but use it less.
• Product performance and/or usability improvements
• Efforts to build customer product proficiency
• Effective self-help initiatives
• Proactive and preventive care to reduce support issues

Conclusion and recommendations

While it is essential to understand how Support demand will change in the year ahead, leaders must always keep their fingers on the pulse of Support demand if they expect to remain prepared to respond to customer needs. Factors that influence support demand may be tied to specific Support initiatives or originate beyond the control of Support—that is, within Sales, Success, Marketing, or Product Development groups.

Consider the following:

• Establish a realistic forecast for new Support demand based on Sales projections.
• Examine your company’s product roadmap to identify any product changes that will increase customers’ need for Support.
• Project the effect of Support and Customer Success initiatives that promote increased product use and adoption.
• Forecast the effect of customer churn.
• Forecast the effect of efforts to reduce or mitigate support demand through self-help and prevention initiatives.