Ask the Experts | Q&A with Encore Care (Video)

Our Client Support Services team answers the most commonly asked questions from clients about our support program. We answer questions about our support packages and how they fit the needs of different businesses.

We discuss the Encore Care Unlimited program and what benefits it comes with such as user coaching and break-fix support.

Webinar Transcript:

Melissa: Welcome, everyone, and good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are. My name is Melissa Greenhill, and I’m a marketing specialist here at Encore. And today I have Lexi Lindway and Scott Murn here from the Encore care team. So, hi guys, I’ll be asking you some questions that we’ve gotten in from our clients about our Encore Care programs. And I’ll just start with you, Lexi. Hi, there.

Lexi: Hi, everyone.

Melissa: Hi. So, let’s jump right in. My first question for you that we’ve gotten is what is Encore Care and how is it different from other Encore offerings?

Lexi: So, to start, I’m the practice lead of the Encore Care team and then joining me is Scott Murn, one of our case administrators. So, what makes Encore Care different from our other Encore offerings is that we are a dedicated team simply for support. Now, while we’re not troubleshooting your case directly, we oversee all of the cases that come through Encore. So, kind of how that makes it different is while you might be discussing a specific case for a specific product with a very specific person. we’re the team that has full oversight and works through your case throughout every different branch of Encore. So, kind of how we’re different is we are here for the day-to-day needs of your business. One of the benefits of that is that you can reach out to us for one-off help without needing to do large project scoping, or involving multiple consultants or multiple areas of the business.

We’re also a little different than other dynamic partner support offering in that we try to engage our clients with different facets of the support area by doing things like blog posts where we can give clients the opportunity to self serve by using our website to search out their issue and walk through one of our many dedicated and guided blog posts with tons of technical instruction for our clients to kind of self serve the issue that they have. Another difference is that we are a live service desk. When you email Encore Care, which is careencorebusiness.com you’re reaching out directly to an individual, you’re not going into a black hole or to any kind of system. So, we are here, available during support hours to make sure we’re dispatching each and every request as we receive it.

Melissa: That’s awesome. Thanks. Okay. Next, what are the different Encore Care packages?

Lexi: So, we have different…excuse me, we have different support packages that fit different needs of every client. So, on the next slide we’ll see all of them here laid out and they’re pretty self-explanatory. We have on the far right what we call OnDemand. In the middle, we have Essentials Plus and Premium and on the far left, we have what’s called Unlimited. So, in any type of basic tier structure, we have more features the higher up you go. In basic short-form, OnDemand is what it sounds, like it’s our ad hoc program. You’re billed at an hourly rate and we offer break-fix support and user coaching and application guidance. Essentials Plus and Premium or what we call subscription-based offers. They go in order, 5, 10, and 20 hours prepaid amount per month that a client could utilize. So, some client who might not need ad hoc support but is not looking to do unlimited might wanna do a prepaid block of hours. It is a small discount versus just doing OnDemand month to month. And that also includes items like new user orientation training, client station installs, new user setup, and a quarterly usage report.

And then you’ll see that the last here is Unlimited, which then includes some software discounts that we offer, cloud console, and the system health check. In short, the new user orientation training and client workstation installs and user setup are really great for new hires as you bring them on to your company. Not only will our Encore consultant who would usually help with any type of case that you have, would walk through your new hire and a 20-point checklist for how to use your new system, but also help install that system on their new laptop and get them ready to go so that your hire, your new hire is hitting the ground running.

A quarterly usage report is what we give to those subscription and unlimited clients because you’re not paying a flat fee per issue, you’re paying a flat fee per month. So, while you’re paying per issue, you have full insight into where your system might have some shortcomings and where you need help versus subscription or unlimited where the flat fee, you’re only paying per user, or per block hour. So, what the quarterly usage report does is gives you a really great oversight into every case opened by your company, every issue that each individual opens. So, it’ll give you a great outlook of category of the issue, the person on your team that opened the case, the person on our team to help facilitate the case and the day it was opened, the day it was closed. It’s a really great way to utilize the information for either training or potential opportunity for project work to help really find any kind of short gaps in your system and help keep your ERP and your CRM system strong.

Cloud consults and system health checks typically go hand in hand. It helps with risk assessment of your system. For our GP clients, we also offer unlimited plus upgrade and unlimited plus Canadian payroll updates. Plus upgrade is a two-year commitment and the Canadian payroll updates is a year-to-year commitment. And those are pretty self-explanatory and can go into greater detail with your account rep.

Melissa: Awesome. So, it looks like the Unlimited is where you get the most benefits…

Lexi: Correct.

Melissa: …looking at this list. Okay, great. So, next question. What offering is best for me and my company?

Lexi: So, it all depends on what one is looking for. Typically, it’s dependent upon the size. Most of our clients like to start out on OnDemand to see what the need is of their support program and grow from there. In the next slide, though, we can take a look at the Unlimited offering and why it’s kind of built the way it’s built. This is a general overview of value add of why we have the Unlimited program set the way we do. We bill our Unlimited program at $55 for a full licensed user per month. And with that, we’ve also taken a use case scenario of an average company of a client of ours that has about 20 users. And we’ve compared what they would have paid, getting every benefit of Unlimited, to paying ad hoc or on-demand for the same program. It’s an average savings of about $10,000. So, the true value-add of Unlimited is we wanna give our clients every opportunity to succeed in different avenues of the unlimited program, and really bring it all together so that they have full control and use of their system in every possible aspect.

Melissa: That’s great. So, we’re looking at the…the right-hand side is looking at the Unlimited.

Lexi: Correct.

Melissa: Okay. So, is Unlimited truly unlimited?

Lexi: This is a common question we get a lot. Truly unlimited is that you can open as many support cases as you need with Encore Care. However, we do have some areas where Encore is unable to assist in whether it be a type of support case that is growing into a small statement of work or a project. Or it might be an area that’s too expensive, too extensive, too large or part of an ISV that Encore may not be able to work with. Should that happen though, Encore scopes the issue and provides a full and detailed workup of the cost that it would be to the client, along with reasons for why it does not fall under the Unlimited plan. At the end of the day, we always want our clients to be the final approver on whether or not work is completed. Encore will not just do work and then bill the client later for that work. We really wanna make sure we’re putting the power of your system back into your hands.

Melissa: Great, thanks for that explanation. Okay, so I think do you wanna talk through a couple or three takeaways that are important for people to know about Encore Care?

Lexi: Sure. So, as the practice lead of the care program, my main goal is to continue to make sure we provide as much of an asterisk-free solution as we can to our clients. I wanna make sure that our clients feel like they have complete control of their ERP and CRM solutions. The Encore Care support program is a way to give clients that full control. So, they can go ahead and reach out to Care, they don’t have to do a full-blown project. They also can utilize Care and not have to worry about what the cost will be later on down the line because of our model of scoping and making sure we’re working with you on any issues that we see come up in your system.

Another takeaway is that we wanna make sure we have cost certainty. Encore publishes all of its pricing models right on our website. We wanna be very transparent so you can see our hourly rates for all of our systems. And then you can also reference back to your Unlimited contract. We do say $55 per user per month, again, published and transparent, so that you know month over month whether, especially with the Unlimited program, if you have 3 cases or you have 15, you’re gonna pay the same dollar amount every month for that support program.

And then finally, we have consistent availability. Again, we are a live support desk, we are available 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central. When you’re reaching out to us, again, you’re reaching out to a real human being, not a robot, not the system, not just a regular Outlook email. We’re here and we’re available and we wanna help our clients work through those issues on a day-to-day basis.

Melissa: That’s great. Awesome. Okay, well, I’m just gonna take a look and see, we’ve had some questions come in if you guys can take some of those. So, first question I have here is how long does each type of Care contract last?

Scott: I can take that one.

Melissa: Awesome.

Scott: So, how long does each type of Care contract last? OnDemand contracts can be canceled at any time, they’re there until you don’t need them anymore. Our subscription ones, the ones in the middle, Essentials Plus or Premium, we bill those monthly, and you can cancel those if you need to after that time. And Unlimited is you can choose to have it billed monthly or annually, but there is a one-year minimum commitment to those. So, you can’t just cancel them at any time. So, as soon as that year is up before renewal, you could cancel that.

Melissa: Okay, thanks. I have another question here. What happens if something breaks during non-standard hours?

Scott: Sure, I can take that one too. If something breaks during non-standard hours, this is another common question that we get, please just submit a ticket like normal and we’ll look at your case as soon as support hours resumed the next business day. Our support is not readily available during non-standard hours. However, if there’s a special situation, it is available on a case-by-case basis and only at a predetermined plan. So, if there’s something going on that you know about, you can talk with us and we could potentially set up a non-standard plan. But other than that, business hours, submit your tickets.

Melissa: That’s great. Okay, we have got time for another question here. Maybe you can take that, Scott. How can we find out how much support we are actually using? That’s a good one.

Scott: Sure. Yeah. Another common question. Lexi kind of covered this during the presentation, but for our subscription clients, as well as Unlimited, you receive that quarterly usage report which details all of your cases and how much time is utilized. Unfortunately, with OnDemand, there is not an actual report for that. So, if you wanna find out how much you’re using, we recommend using one…excuse me, subscription plans.

Melissa: Okay, that sounds great. Okay, that’s all we have for questions now. Thank you so much, both of you, for spending some time answering these questions. Anything else you wanted to add or…?

Lexi: I think that’s it.

Melissa: That’s it? Okay. Well, thank you so much, Lexi and Scott, that was great, it was very informative. Have a good afternoon, everyone. Bye-bye.