2003 TECHNICAL SUPPORT SALARY SURVEY PRODUCED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS

Transcription

1 2003 TECHNICAL SUPPORT SALARY SURVEY PRODUCED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS Published by The Association of Support Professionals 122 Barnard Avenue Watertown, Mass Telephone 617/ Fax 617/ Copyright ASP All rights reserved. This report may not be reproduced without permission of the publishers.

2 The 2003 ASP Tech Support Salary Survey It s no secret that tech support organizations have gone through one of the toughest periods of belttightening in more than a decade. Layoffs, outsourcing, hiring freezes, mergers the cost-cutting pressures and bad news have been relentless. Yet mysteriously, support salaries have been rising during this same period of economic distress. During 2001, the ASP s annual support salary survey found major gains from entry-level customer service reps to the top levels of management. And now this year s numbers reveal even greater gains, especially among senior technicians and managers. What s happening here? There are certainly many factors at work, but we think it s likely that the recent gains in support pay are primarily the result of a kind of survival of the fittest shakeout in the job market. When we look closely at layoffs and outsourcing, it turns out that most of the reductions in support headcount have taken place among employees with the poorest skills and least experience, who often aren t being replaced. The survivors tend to be the organization s best performers who also tend to be the best-paid support employees. Moreover, it s clear that average pay has risen faster at the top of the skill ladder than at the bottom. Support executives, managers, and analysts saw median pay gains between 7.7% and 10% last year, while customer service reps and entry-level technicians ended up with gains in the 4% to 5.6% range. And companies seem especially willing to pay premium salaries when support employees deal directly with high-value customers: Thus, senior executives, whose responsibilities typically include maintaining customer relationships, earned larger raises than internally-focused department managers, and customer service reps who handle calls from big-ticket customers (buyers of software priced over $10,000) earned much larger raises than those dealing with mass-market customers. Of course, the interesting question now is whether this upward trend will continue. To a large degree, the current round of raises are a statistical fluke, the result of subtracting many worst-paid employees from the sample universe. But they also reflect a restructuring of support jobs in ways that put greater emphasis on experience and skill, and far less reliance on low-paid warm bodies. In the long run, we suspect this restructuring will create higher levels of pay based on the their contribution to customer loyalty and satisfaction. To help identify benchmarks for support pay, the Association of Support Professionals compiles this annual support compensation survey. In addition to industry-wide compensation statistics (page 3), we offer a look at some of the variables such as company size, number of support employees, application price, and geography that have an impact on these general numbers.* A key part of our survey methodology is a set of standardized job titles and capsule job descriptions that have remained constant for the eight-year history of this survey. Here s how our questionnaire describes the categories we use, along with a few observations about this year s data: SENIOR SUPPORT EXECUTIVE (vice president or director level) Coordinates activities and budgets of multiple support groups or sites. Meets regularly with senior corporate management and key customers. Two-thirds of the companies in this year s survey have both a senior support executive who coordinates several support groups and at least one department manager who oversees an individual support center. Overall pay for senior support executives (median $110,000) rose by 10% last year, and has been moving upwards at a steady rate over the past seven years. Increasingly, the top support executive has become a key spokesperson for customer relationships, and this role often puts support executive pay on a par with other top executives; currently, our survey sample includes 21 executives who earn in excess of $150,000. * One caution: Statistical reliability suffers when there are too few responses in a breakout category. We ve indicated the number of responses (the count ) in every segment as a rough guide to the accuracy of each data point ASP SALARY SURVEY

3 Tech Support Salaries Count High Low Median Senior Support Executive 146 $125,000 $89,000 $110,000 Department Manager 177 $80,000 $58,000 $70,000 Analyst/Project Manager 118 $75,000 $50,000 $60,000 Senior Support Technician 165 $60,000 $42,000 $50,000 Least skilled 99 $52,500 $38,500 $45,000 Most skilled 111 $74,000 $50,000 $60,000 Field Support Technician 68 $65,000 $38,000 $45,500 Least skilled 44 $55,000 $30,000 $40,000 Most skilled 46 $80,000 $45,000 $56,500 Support Technician 159 $45,000 $33,000 $38,000 Least skilled 113 $40,000 $30,000 $33,000 Most skilled 116 $55,000 $40,000 $45,000 Customer Service Rep 83 $35,000 $26,000 $31,200 Least skilled 60 $33,500 $24,000 $28,500 Most skilled 60 $45,000 $30,000 $37,200 Source: 2003 ASP Tech Support Salary Survey. Note: Count is the number of responses in each salary category or sub-category. High salary is the median for the top 50% of all salaries in each category; Low salary is the median for the bottom 50%. DEPARTMENT MANAGER Manages day-to-day activity of a single support center staff. Most support organizations have at least one inside manager who oversees ongoing operations, including tactical areas such as productivity, recruiting, and customer satisfaction. Usually, support department managers supervise fairly small groups of technicians, and many spend part of their time on the phone during periods of heavy call volume. Department managers also saw high salary growth last year (7.7%) on top of similar gains (8.3%) the year before. ANALYST/PROJECT MANAGER Manages major business activity; usually has no direct reports. In addition to department managers, many support organizations have specialists who manage such areas as performance analysis, staff scheduling, Web site implementation, and automation systems. Currently, analysts and project managers earn $60,000 in median pay. Although pay for the analyst/project manager category had been fairly level in recent years, the category took off in 2002 with a 9.1% gain. SENIOR SUPPORT TECHNICIAN Answers escalated calls; may function as a group or team leader. Most support organizations have developed career paths that reward experience, in-depth product knowledge, certification, or a part-time management and training role. Often, the primary job of the senior technician is to provide answers to questions that first-level support reps or outsourcers can t answer. Median pay for senior technicians rose by 6.4% last year to $50,000, on top of 4-5% increases in previous years. The best-paid 25% senior support technicians earn more than $60,000; the bottom 25% earn less than $42, ASP SALARY SURVEY 3

4 FIELD SUPPORT TECHNICIAN Provides on-site service, primarily for enterprise products. Support for products priced below $10,000 is typically provided over the telephone, but many high-end software companies also provide on-site services, usually as part of installation or fee-based maintenance plans. In the past, field technicians were the industry s highest paid support reps; in the past few years, however, their salary profile has become more closely aligned with the senior support technician category. Pay trends for this group have been erratic: Field support reps gained 5.8% in 2002, lost 3.1% the previous year, and gained 12.5% the year before that. SUPPORT TECHNICIAN Provides first-level solutions, primarily over the phone. At most software companies, the task of handling unescalated telephone calls is an entry-level job with relatively high turnover. Although pay levels tend to be low ($38,000 median), there has been a steady year-to-year trend (roughly 3%-5% per year) toward higher pay since Only 25% of support technicians earn more than $45,000, but experienced techs often move up to senior support jobs and even become analysts and managers. CUSTOMER SERVICE REP Answers routine service questions; routes calls to technicians. Customer service reps typically handle first-level customer contacts that don t require diagnostic skills or training, such as collecting background information and filling orders. Many companies now pay customer service reps on an hourly basis; the current industry median salary, $31,200, is equal to about $15.00/hour. VARIABLES: REVENUES, ORGANIZATION SIZE, PRODUCT PRICE, LOCATION Annual revenues: Although company size is not always an important variable in support salaries, our data currently shows a fairly consistent correlation between annual revenues and median pay for most of our categories. For rank-and-file support employees and analyst/ project managers, pay often jumps substantially at $10 million in annual sales and then levels off (or sometimes even declines slightly). For executives and managers, however, company size has relatively less influence on compensation levels: Annual Company Revenues <$1 MM $1-$10 MM $10-$99 MM $100+ MM Senior Support Executive * $100,000 $111,896 $120,000 Count: Department Manager * $70,000 $70,000 $80,000 Count: Analyst/Project Manager * $55,000 $70,000 $65,000 Count: Senior Support Technician * $45,000 $50,000 $55,000 Count: Field Support Technician * $42,000 $58,000 $51,000 Count: Support Technician * $35,000 $40,000 $41,000 Count: Customer Service Rep * $29,000 $30,000 $32,500 Count: Asterisk (*) indicates insufficient data (fewer than10 responses) ASP SALARY SURVEY

5 Organization size: A more important variable for support compensation is the size of a firm s support department. Large support organizations (those with 30 or more employees) pay higher salaries in higher-skilled categories, compared to their mid-sized (10-29 employees) and small (1-9 employees) counterparts. For lower-skilled support technicians and customer service reps, however, the pay differential between large and small support organizations is fairly modest; in fact, customer service reps actually earn less in large support organizations. This pay pattern almost certainly is the result of greater job specialization in larger organizations. Support reps in small groups tend to handle a variety of tasks, skilled and unskilled, so their pay puts a kind of average value on their mix of tasks. Large groups are more likely to pay for specific job roles more for advanced skills and less for entry-level skills. Support Organization Size (employees) Senior Support Executive $108,000 $102,500 $120,000 Count: Department Manager $60,000 $70,500 $71,500 Count: Analyst/Project Manager $55,000 $60,000 $65,000 Count: Senior Support Technician $50,000 $49,000 $50,000 Count: Field Support Technician $45,000 $45,000 $56,000 Count: Support Technician $36,000 $40,000 $40,000 Count: Customer Service Rep $32,000 $33,000 $30,000 Count: Product price: Companies that sell high-end software (priced above $10,000) usually provide support as part of maintenance contracts and other fee-based programs, so they tend to recruit better-paid support technicians and even pay a $5,000 premium for customer service reps: Price of Company s Best-Selling Product <$999 $1,000-$9,995 $10,000+ Senior Support Executive $120,000 $100,000 $120,000 Count: Department Manager $65,000 $68,000 $70,000 Count: Analyst/Project Manager $55,000 $55,000 $60,000 Count: Senior Support Technician $46,000 $52,000 $51,750 Count: Field Support Technician * * $52,000 Count: Support Technician $35,750 $37,382 $42,000 Count: Customer Service Rep $30,000 * $35,000 Count: Asterisk (*) indicates insufficient data (fewer than10 responses) 2003 ASP SALARY SURVEY 5

6 Location: Support pay is also affected by local cost-of-living differences, especially between rural and metro areas. Two states with high concentrations of technology companies California and Massachusetts have labor costs that are typically 10%-15% higher than national averages: Location of Primary Support Center Calif. Mass. Senior Support Executive $120,000 $120,000 Count: Department Manager $79,000 $85,000 Count: Analyst/Project Manager $75,000 $67,500 Count: Senior Support Technician $57,000 $55,000 Count: Field Support Technician $65,000 * Count: 10 5 Support Technician $42,500 $42,500 Count: Customer Service Rep $35,000 * Count: 20 7 Asterisk (*) indicates insufficient data (fewer than 10 responses). THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF SUPPORT This survey, our eighth annual report on tech support salaries in the software industry, reflects survey data supplied by 206 software support organizations with a total of more than 37,327 support employees. Some key characteristics of our sample universe: Company size: 34% of our respondents report annual sales of $100 million or more, 32% have sales of $10-$99 million, 28% have sales of $1-$10 million, and 6% are below $1 million. Organization size: Although 34 companies in our survey have more than 100 support employees, the absolute size of most software support organizations is fairly small: Median organization size is currently 15 employees; 36% have 30 or more support employees, 31% have employees, and 33% have 1-9 employees, Product price: Many of the software companies in our sample serve high-end vertical or enterprise markets. The median price for our respondents best-selling products is $15,000; 56% support products that sell for more than $10,000, another 22% support products in the $1,000-$9,995 range, and 22% support products that sell for less than $999. Year-to-Year Comparison: Average Pay Keeps Rising, Especially at the Top Change Senior Support Executive $100,000 $110, % Department Manager $65,000 $70, % Analyst/Project Manager $55,000 $60, % Senior Support Technician $47,000 $50, % Field Support Technician $43,000 $45, % Support Technician $36,000 $38, % Customer Service Rep $30,000 $31, % ASP SALARY SURVEY