Managed support
Service sheet 6/6 · Low (monthly) · Ongoing; 3–12 month termsKeep the system working after go-live — monitoring, fixes, retraining, changes.
- Monitoring with someone accountable when a flow breaks or a model starts answering badly.
- A defined budget of changes per month (new products, wording, seasonal flows).
- Periodic retraining or re-tuning on your latest data, with a report.
- Support agreement with response times, hours, channels, and what counts as an incident
- Monthly report: volumes, failures, hand-offs to humans, changes made, costs incurred
- Change log and version history you can read
- The system faces customers or money and nobody in-house can fix it at 21:00.
- Third-party platforms (Meta, model providers) change terms and prices and someone must adapt the system.
- Extraction or classification quality drifts as your documents and customers change.
| Effort band | Low monthly · ongoing |
|---|---|
| Your side | One named contact; approve changes; read the monthly report |
| Terms to fix | Hours (CAT), response and resolution times, change budget, exit and handover |
| Pricing fit | Retainer + capped usage pass-through |
| Zimbabwe constraint | Invoice in one currency; state how USD API and messaging bills are settled |
- Support that is only reachable through the vendor's founder's WhatsApp.
- A retainer with no report — you cannot tell what you paid for.
- Third-party fee pass-through with no cap or notice period.
Retainer · Per-conversation or per-document · Hybrid
See pricing models for how each behaves when volume changes.
A managed-support agreement is where the pricing model matters most. A flat retainer is simple and predictable; per-conversation or per-document pricing follows your volume — good when volume is low, punishing at month-end. Most buyers end up with a hybrid: a small retainer that covers monitoring and a change budget, plus usage pass-through with a cap.
The report is the product. If the monthly report does not exist, the support does not exist. Ask for it in the contract: volumes handled, failures, human hand-offs, changes made, third-party costs. Reading it takes ten minutes and tells you whether the system is still doing the job you bought it for.
Currency. Third-party model and messaging fees are billed abroad in USD. Decide in the contract who holds that account and how it is settled; a vendor who invoices you locally in full removes forex friction from your side, and that is worth a margin.