Although it's possible to set up a decent Web support site for under $50,000, most software companies these days end up spending much more—in some cases, upwards of $500,000 for a site that supports multiple products and users who need more than simple FAQ answers.

What's the typical payback for this kind of investment? So far, good benchmarks are tough to find, in part because Web support tends to change customer behavior. Since Web support is generally easier and quicker to access, the total number of support inquiries usually goes up—just as the number of bank transactions rises whenever automated teller machines are installed. There's an obvious tradeoff between live and automated transactions, but it's certainly not one-for-one.

One interesting signpost, however, comes from statistics Microsoft has recently collected for its two-year-old Web support site. Not surprisingly, this is one of the industry's largest and most heavily-trafficked sites, with 2.3 million daily page views, 100,000 resource documents, and six servers to pump out knowledgebase text, patches, and other support content. Most software companies can't achieve Microsoft's economies of scale, but the Microsoft numbers are still a useful point of reference:

• Call avoidance: The first version of the site went live in early 1996, with about 5,000 visits per day. Since then, traffic has zoomed up to 129,000 visits per day. During the same period, phone activity has actually dropped from 35,000 calls per day to fewer than 20,000 calls, even though total unit shipments have increased. In addition, Microsoft no longer sees a huge (and expensive) spike in call volume during major product launches. If the Microsoft numbers are at all representative, it takes eight to ten Web transactions to eliminate the need for each live call.

• Transaction costs: The Microsoft Web support site has a hefty staff of 80 "full-time employees and contractors," and the operating costs for the site are about $4 million per year. Microsoft ends up spending about $50,000 per employee for Web support, roughly the same as for live support. But the cost per transaction works out to just 8.5˘—--an enormous improvement over even the most efficient live phone support. (Microsoft's own estimate is that the cost of comparable phone support would have been "roughly $15 million" more than the cost of Web-based support.)

• Call complexity: Microsoft's support site seems to handle more than just easy questions. Sixty per cent of visitors describe themselves as "advanced users," and the average visitor views 18 pages of content (including navigational pages). Microsoft also operates a separate support site for developers; here, traffic is currently about 30,000 visits per day.

• E-mail: The site also offers an e-mail support option, which currently generates 2,000 inquiries per day. Since each e-mail has to be answered individually, e-mail support is significantly more costly than other Web-based transactions. But e-mail support represents less than 2% of Microsoft's total online support activity, so it's not an option that many Web visitors seem to abuse.