On the blog, we often talk about how TestBox is the easiest and most convenient way to evaluate customer support software. There’s no need to set up trial versions of products and go through all the effort of importing your own test data and setting up example configurations and workflows. TestBox takes care of all that, so you can quickly start testing the use cases that are most important to your business, and compare products side-by-side.

If you haven’t seen TestBox in action yet, check out our TestBox in a Nutshell post or watch the Introduction to TestBox video on our home page.

Sounds great, right? But how much time and money can you actually save by using TestBox? Let’s dig in and see.

The short answer

The long answer

To calculate these numbers, we split the buying process into phases:

• Initial research and shortlist: You’re choosing the products that might be right for your team.
• Building a scorecard: You’re deciding on your criteria for evaluating each product and creating a spreadsheet to track it all.
• Initial vendor outreach: You’re ready to test products and start setting up demo calls.
• Learning each product: You might be playing with products in several sandboxes or you’re searching for information online.
• Sales demos: You’re sitting on live calls with the sales team for each product. 
• Follow-up calls with vendors: You’re narrowing your choices and following up with vendors to get answers to specific questions.
• Convincing other stakeholders: You and your team have chosen the product you want to buy and now need to get other stakeholders (e.g., leadership, engineering, IT, legal) involved and in agreement.
  

We estimated the time you and your team would need to spend in each phase and multiplied that by the number of products companies generally consider (5–8 products).

Hours x Number of Products

Here’s the result:

How TestBox saves so much time

Time savings start the moment you would usually reach out to vendors. If you use TestBox, vendor outreach drops to zero hours. Instead of talking with several vendors, you can sign up for a free TestBox account and get access to the products you’re considering in minutes.

When it comes to learning each product, using TestBox can reduce the time you need to spend by 75 percent. Our guided use cases help you evaluate the features directly without the need to reach out to forums, watch videos, or ask sales engineers for help.

The amount of time you need to spend on sales demo calls also drops to zero since you can evaluate the product hands-on yourself. And the number of hours you’ll spend on follow-up calls is likely to be reduced by half because you can shorten your list of products earlier. An added benefit is that TestBox team can liaise with our partners on your behalf, so if you have questions you don’t have to speak with them yourself.

Additional savings after you select a product

Once you’ve selected a product and it’s time to implement it, TestBox can save you even more time. That’s because you can take your TestBox environment with you — yes, you can export the instance of the product you’ve been testing. Savings at this point could be up to $4,000 or 25 percent of usual implementation costs, based on a standard 12-week implementation phase (which could easily cost your team up to $16,000).

Because you can take your TestBox environment with you, you’ll be up and running sooner. Some of your team members will already have experience using the new software in TestBox, so they’ll be able to help train others in your organization. And, since you achieved collective buy-in at the consideration stage, adoption will be easier, too.

Something else to expect is that you’ll experience less stress. TestBox can help guide you through the buying process. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself and you’ll feel more confident that you’ve made the right decision for your team.

In conclusion

We're sure that using TestBox will save you time and money, and be a less stressful way to choose software. Check out our customer success stories, and if you haven’t already, sign up for a free TestBox account so you can try it out.