Have you ever been trapped in vendor support hell?
You know the drill. You have a question about your account. You call the main number and get routed to a generalist who asks you to explain your problem. They can't solve it, so they escalate to a specialist. The specialist is unavailable, so they create a ticket. The ticket gets assigned to someone who doesn't know your history, so they ask you to explain the problem again. Three days later, you're still waiting, and the review cycle you needed help with is already underway.
This is what happens when vendors build layers between their customers and the people who can actually help.
The real cost of tiered vendor support isn't just time—it's the trust you lose with your managers every time the tool lets them down.Most HR tech vendors organize their support teams the same way: Tier 1 handles basic questions, Tier 2 handles technical issues, Tier 3 handles escalations. It looks efficient on an org chart. In practice, it creates a maze that customers have to navigate every time they need help.
The structure exists to protect the vendor's time, not the customer's. Every layer is a filter designed to keep the more expensive, more knowledgeable people from having to talk to you directly.
High-friction environments reduce the odds of a completed purchase by 43%. That stat comes from buying research, but the principle applies just as strongly to the post-sale experience. Every unnecessary step between your question and the answer costs time, erodes trust, and makes you wonder whether anyone on the vendor side actually cares about your success.
And the downstream effects are real. When HR teams can't get timely support, they can't keep their managers on track. When managers fall behind, review completion drops. When review completion drops, the tool stops delivering value. And when the tool stops delivering value, you start shopping for a replacement.
Companies with dedicated customer success managers see up to 25% higher net revenue retention than those without. The reason is straightforward: when someone knows your account, they solve problems faster, catch issues earlier, and keep the relationship strong.
When we built Upward365, we had a clear picture of what we didn't want to replicate.
We had spent 15 years in this industry watching support teams get built for the vendor's convenience instead of the customer's. Tiered escalation. Anonymous ticket queues. Chatbots that force you through a decision tree before admitting they can't help.
So we made different choices. Deliberate ones.
First, we kept the structure flat. When you reach out to Upward365, you talk to someone who knows your account, your configuration, and your review timeline. Not a generalist reading from a script.
Second, we eliminated unnecessary handoffs. The person who answers your question is the person who solves your problem. No escalation loops, no "let me transfer you to our technical team." If the issue does require specialized attention, the handoff happens internally. You don't feel it.
Third, we set a standard for resolution speed: same-day. Not 48 hours. Not "we'll get back to you within one business day." Same day. Because we know what's at stake when your review cycle is live and something isn't working.
Here's what flat structure and no-silo support actually looks like for an HR team running performance reviews:
Your review cycle launches Monday. On Tuesday, a manager reports that a template section isn't loading correctly. Your HR coordinator calls us. They reach someone who already knows their account, their template structure, and which managers are assigned to which review cycles.
The issue is identified, fixed, and confirmed within hours. The manager never knows there was a problem. The HR coordinator doesn't spend the rest of the day chasing a ticket number.
That's not a hypothetical. That's how we operate, because we've seen firsthand what happens when vendors don't.
95% of managers say they're unhappy with their current performance management process. A lot of that frustration comes from the tools themselves. But a surprising amount comes from what happens when the tool doesn't work and nobody is there to help.
Manager adoption is the single biggest driver of whether a performance management platform delivers value or becomes expensive shelfware. And manager adoption depends heavily on whether the tool works reliably, every time, without the HR team having to fight through layers of support to keep it running.
Building support this way is more expensive for us. We can't spread one support rep across 500 accounts and call it a success. We have smaller ratios, which means more people on our team and higher service costs per customer.
We chose that trade-off deliberately.
The long view says that keeping customers for years costs less than replacing them every 12 months.
The long view says that a customer who trusts your support team becomes your best referral source.
The long view says that organizational design isn't just an internal decision; it's a product feature your customers experience every time they need help.
It costs 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain one. We'd rather invest in the people and structure that keep our customers successful than spend that money on marketing to replace the ones we lost.
If you've been stuck in vendor support hell, you know how much it costs. Not just in dollars, but in time, frustration, and lost trust with your managers.
We built Upward365 so you never have to navigate that maze again. See how our team is structured to support yours.