Run a monthly usage review: what to check and who approves increases

You need the vendor's usage report, your forecast and the owner of each automated process. All figures in this article are illustrative. Prices are before tax and in no particular currency.

Set up the review

Hold the review in the first week of each month, after the vendor's usage period closes. Invite three roles:

• Platform admin. Brings the usage report and knows the current alerts and limits.
• Process owners. Explain what changed in their area, such as a campaign or a new channel.
• Budget owner. The named person in your business who approves increases in spend.

Agree in advance who approves each kind of change, and keep the record with the contract.

Name a deputy for the budget owner. A hard limit can stop a process while the approver is on leave.

Decide who receives each alert

In the example, the plan includes 20,000 credits a month for $700. Overage costs $0.04 per credit. Alerts fire at 75% (15,000 credits) and 90% (18,000 credits). A hard limit stops usage at 22,000 credits.

For each alert, agree who receives it, how fast someone acknowledges it and who it goes to next. The table shows an example set.

Send alerts to a shared mailbox or channel as well as to named people. The alert then still reaches someone when a recipient is away.

Collect the numbers

Gather three sets of figures for the previous month from the usage report, which shows more than the invoice total.

1. Usage. Units used by each process.
2. Volume. How many times each process ran, such as emails answered or records enriched.
3. Results. What the process achieved, such as emails closed without a staff reply.

Confirm that the report shows usage by process. Some reports show totals by feature only. If two processes use the same feature, you cannot split its total without a tag or a separate setting. Ask the vendor, or estimate the split from volume and mark it as an estimate.

Compare expected and actual usage

Use the forecast for each process. Compare actual usage with the expected operating usage, before the buffer. October was a normal month in the example. Expected operating usage was 14,800 credits, and the buffered budget was 16,280.

Total usage reached 18,520 credits, about 93% of the allowance. That is 2,240 credits, or about 14%, above the buffered budget. Both alerts fired, and usage stayed below the hard limit.

Find the cause of each variance

Divide units used by volume to get units per action. Then compare both numbers with the forecast.

• Support email agent. The agent answered 2,520 emails against a forecast of 2,000. It still used 5 credits per email. The cause is volume, from a product launch.
• Call summaries. The team held 380 calls against a forecast of 400. Each summary used 8 credits, as planned.
• Contact enrichment. The workflow enriched 2,880 contacts at 1 credit each. An event list added 1,280 contacts, and the workflow enriched every one of them.

When units per action rise, look at message length, extra steps, retries and test runs. When volume rises, ask the process owner what changed in the business.

Counts show the scale of a change. Investigate causes in the source system, and keep customer content out of the review record. If you need to look at one case, open it in the platform with the right access.

Check results and quality against usage

Record one result for each process, to show what the usage achieved.

In the example, the agent closed 1,890 of 2,520 emails without a staff reply. That is 75%. Each closed email cost about 6.7 credits, because the agent also used credits on emails it passed to staff.

A closed email meets the vendor's definition of a resolution. It does not show whether the customer got a useful answer. Add a quality measure, such as one of these:

• The share of closed emails that customers reopen within 7 days. In the example, 95 of 1,890 reopened, about 5%.
• A monthly review of a sample of closed emails, such as 30, scored against an agreed checklist.

Run the sampled review inside the support platform. Record only the scores and counts. If the vendor bills per resolution, ask how it treats cases that reopen.

For enrichment, check how many event contacts became useful leads. If few did, enrich contacts only after someone qualifies them.

Prepare a request before any limit increase

October usage stayed below the 20,000-credit allowance and the 22,000-credit hard limit. A change to the limit needs a forecast for the coming months.

In the example, November and December are the seasonal peak. The support manager expects the launch to add 500 emails a month to the peak forecast. The marketing manager agrees to enrich only qualified contacts.

Both figures are above the 22,000-credit hard limit. At the current limit, work would pause before the end of each month.

At the current limit, overage cannot pass 2,000 credits, which is $80.00 a month. A 26,000-credit limit allows up to 6,000 credits, which is $240.00 a month. The higher limit can add up to $160.00 a month, or $320.00 over the two months.

List the alternatives beside the cost:

• Keep the 22,000-credit limit. At the limit, new emails go to the staff support inbox, so estimate the staff time this needs.
• Buy a credit pack, if the vendor offers one at a lower rate than overage.
• Move to a larger plan. First check whether you can move back down after two months, because some contracts hold the higher tier until renewal.

Put the forecast, the cost and the alternatives to the budget owner. Change the limit only after they approve it.

Record the decision

Copy this record into a spreadsheet and complete one row for each process every month. The example shows the support agent.

Give every increase an end date. Without one, a temporary increase becomes the new normal.