Battling to gain and retain customer loyalty, 90 percent of software publishers today provide customer and technical support with few, if any, restrictions. And software vendors make certain the support person answering questions is very well trained before he or she is allowed to pick up the phone.

Those are some of the findings of the recent Customer and Technical Support Survey conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Software Publishers Association (SPA). The survey was conducted among 280 publishers of business, education and consumer software. Among its other key findings:

* Six in 10 software publishers report their company's support costs have increased in the last two years. However, less than one-fourth say they experienced an increase in support costs relative to software unit sales.

* Firms report support employees receive an average of 75 hours of training and/or apprenticeship before they respond independently to inquiries. Additionally, most software publishers say their part-time support employees are trained to the same level of knowledge as their full-time customer and technical support employees.

* Domestic and international customer and technical support are available an average of nine hours a day, five days a week. Domestic response rates range from about nine minutes for telephone support inquiries to 21 minutes for non-telephone inquiries.

Similarly, international response rate averages for telephone and non-telephone support are nine and 24 minutes, respectively.

* Among software publishers that offer local support to international customers, the way publishers handle international support is notably similar among Europe, Far East/Asia, and the rest of the world. It appears that the methods successfully established in Europe are being replicated in other parts of the world as those markets grow and become established.

Of the methods tested, only local/regional support centers are substantially more prevalent in Europe than they are in the Far East/Asia and the rest of the world (see following table).

How Do Publishers Provide International Support Services?

                          Europe  Far East/Asia  Rest of the World
Channel/Distribution
Partners                   54%        44%              52%
U.S. Support Centers       39%        40%              47%
Own Local Support Center   25%        9%               8%
Local Republisher          17%        13%              11%
Cntry-by-Cntry Support
Center                     10%        7%               6%
Contract Out Support       5%         5%               5%
No Office There            24%        38%              35%