‍

Your support team is drowning. Your customers are angry. And every single ticket is burning cash you don't have.

Here's the part nobody talks about: most of those tickets shouldn't exist.

The $10 Problem Nobody Sees

Every support conversation costs you money. Real money. Not some vague "opportunity cost" - actual dollars leaving your bank account.

The math is brutal. Industry data shows the average SaaS support interaction costs $10. That's based on typical monthly support costs of $5,000 handling 500 issues.

Think that sounds cheap? Let's scale it.

100 tickets a week = $1,000

400 tickets a month = $4,000

4,800 tickets a year = $48,000

That's a full-time hire. Gone. Because your docs suck.

But it gets worse. Support costs don't scale. As you grow, tickets grow faster. Your team gets overwhelmed. Response times slow. Customers get mad. They churn.

The real cost isn't $10 per ticket. It's the compound effect of broken support eating your business alive.

DataCamp's 66% Wake-Up Call

DataCamp was bleeding support tickets. Every new feature meant more confusion. More questions. More costs.

Then they did something radical. They made their documentation 10x better. Not 10% better. Ten times.

The result? Support tickets dropped 66% in six months.

Let's put that in real numbers. If DataCamp was handling 1,000 tickets per month at $10 each, they were burning $10,000 monthly. After fixing their docs, that dropped to $3,400.

Annual savings: $79,200.

From documentation. Not a new product. Not a marketing campaign. Just better docs.

Buffer's 26% Quick Win

Buffer took a different approach. They didn't rebuild everything. They redesigned their help center with one goal: help users help themselves.

They added contextual article recommendations. When users searched for answers, the system suggested related content. Simple stuff.

Result: 26% fewer support tickets.

For a company handling 500 tickets monthly, that's 130 fewer conversations. At $10 each, that's $1,300 saved per month. $15,600 per year.

The kicker? This wasn't some massive project. It was smart, targeted improvements. The kind any SaaS company could implement in weeks, not months.

Sikt's 50% Support Liberation

Sikt (Norwegian Library Services) had a different problem. They serve 5,800+ users across multiple institutions. Support was drowning in repetitive questions.

Their solution was dead simple: publish user-friendly documentation. Make it searchable. Keep it updated.

The impact: 50% reduction in customer support load.

Half. Their support burden cut in half.

For an organization that size, we're talking about freeing up entire team members to work on actual problems instead of answering the same questions over and over.

The Hidden Multiplication Effect

Here's what the case studies don't capture: the multiplication effect.

When support agents aren't drowning in tickets, they:

• Respond faster to complex issues
• Build better relationships with enterprise customers  
• Create internal documentation that prevents future tickets
• Actually have time to improve processes

Every ticket you prevent doesn't just save $10. It creates capacity for growth.

ProProfs research shows companies with strong knowledge bases see 30% reductions in IT support calls while providing 24/7 support access. That's not just cost savings. That's competitive advantage.

Why Most Companies Miss This

The problem is visibility. Support costs hide in salary budgets. They spread across departments. Nobody sees the total damage.

Marketing spends $100K on a campaign and tracks every penny. Support burns $100K on preventable tickets and nobody notices.

Document360's research reveals the pattern: companies only measure documentation ROI after implementing improvements. Then they're shocked by the savings.

The average company discovers:

• 20-50% support ticket reduction within 3-6 months
• 200-500% ROI within the first year
• Exponential savings as the company scales

Your Move

Every day you wait costs money. Real money. $10 at a time. Thousands of times.

The fix isn't complicated. It's not expensive. It just takes deciding that documentation matters.

DataCamp decided. They saved 66%.  
Buffer decided. They saved 26%.  
Sikt decided. They saved 50%.

‍

What's your number going to be?

‍

‍

Sources

1. Document360 - Guide to Reduce Customer Support Tickets
https://document360.com/blog/reduce-support-tickets/  
Industry benchmarks on support costs and ticket reduction strategies

2. UserView - 3 Companies Show You How They Reduced Support Ticket Volume
https://userview.com/blog/3-companies-show-you-how-they-reduced-support-ticket-volume  
DataCamp 66% and Buffer 26% reduction case studies

3. ProProfs - How Sikt Reduced Burden on Customer Support by 50% with ProProfs KB
https://www.proprofskb.com/case-study/sikt/  
Sikt 50% support reduction case study

4. Document360 - 3 Real-Life Case Studies: How Document360 Reduces Support Tickets
https://document360.com/blog/how-document360-helps-businesses-reduce-support-tickets/  
Additional enterprise case studies and ROI calculations

5. Ken Moo - 15 Best SaaS Customer Support Metrics To Track
https://kenmoo.me/saas-customer-support-metrics/  
Support cost calculations and industry averages

6. Document360 - How to Measure the Value of Documentation
https://document360.com/blog/value-of-documentation/  
ROI measurement frameworks and business impact metrics

7. KnowledgeOwl - Calculating the ROI of Documentation and Knowledge Bases
https://blog.knowledgeowl.com/blog/posts/calculating-the-roi-of-documentation/  
Documentation ROI calculation methodologies