Why Support Is the Real Differentiator in Sourcing Software

Summary

Keelvar's customer support beats the software industry median on all four core measures in the Freshworks Customer Service Benchmark Report 2026 (1.2 billion tickets, 33,889 companies, 63 industries): 99.27% response SLA (first response within SLA) against a 10.33% median, 41.9% first contact resolution against 16.32%, 98.3% customer satisfaction against 88.60%, and a 3.6-hour median resolution time in 2026 against 6.1 hours. AI now handles 72.6% of our customer contacts, freeing our sourcing experts for the complex problems only a human should touch. In enterprise sourcing, the technology gets you in the door. What happens after go-live decides whether it delivers.

Keelvar support at a glance (12 months to September 2026)

• 26,548 support tickets handled
• 72.6% of customer contacts handled by AI
• 28-minute median first response on medium-priority tickets
• 117% more customer contacts since AI support launched, with 27% fewer reaching a human
• Median resolution time: 3.6 hours in 2026 to date, against 4.6 hours across the full 12 months
• Overall SLA attainment: 95.8% (2024), 99.0% (2025), 99.9% (2026 to date)

Why does support matter so much in sourcing software?

Support matters in sourcing software because procurement teams use it to run business-critical events on tight timelines, where a delayed logistics tender or a mispriced award has consequences that reach leadership fast. They do not buy it to admire the optimization models. In our space, the quality and reliability of the technology is the price of entry. What separates platforms is what happens after deployment: whether a buyer stuck mid-event at 6pm gets an answer, whether a first-time bidder can complete a submission without friction, whether a champion user trusts the platform enough to expand it across categories.

Support is often treated as a cost center, a reactive function that sits downstream of the real product. We see it differently. In sourcing, support is where the product either earns adoption or loses it.

Before joining Keelvar, I was a heavy user of enterprise sourcing software, running hundreds of millions of dollars in spend through these tools. I know firsthand how painful it is to drop an urgent issue into a support inbox or leave a voicemail and just hope someone responds before a tender deadline passes, only to eventually get a curt, superficial reply that misses the root cause entirely. That lived experience is why our 40%+ first-contact resolution rate matters so much to me. We don’t take tickets at face value. Our support team is made up of former industry practitioners who actually dig in, test scenarios, and solve the underlying problem on the first attempt.

Dylan Alperin, Chief Customer Officer

How does Keelvar's support compare to the software industry in 2026?

Keelvar beats the software industry median on all four core support metrics, and clears the top 20% of software support teams on two of them.

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The report puts the top 20% of software support teams at 34.08% for response SLA and 35.21% for first contact resolution. Keelvar sits at 99.27% and 41.9%. Across every SLA commitment on human-handled tickets, we are at 99.84%.

The benchmark is the Freshworks Customer Service Benchmark Report 2026, using its breakout for software and internet companies over the same period. Every Keelvar figure covers contacts that reached a human. None of them are averaged with our faster AI response times.

The comparison with other sourcing vendors is even starker. Over the past 12 months, Keelvar's actual median first response on medium-priority tickets was 28 minutes. The published targets of other sourcing vendors range from 16 business hours to 2 business days.

Why is first contact resolution so hard in sourcing software?

First contact resolution is hard in sourcing because answering correctly the first time means understanding an optimization scenario or a supplier bid structure, not just the product interface. Keelvar resolves 41.9% of tickets on first contact, four in every ten, in a field built on constraint models and multi-round bid data. The industry median is fewer than two in ten. It is the metric we are proudest of, and the one that is hardest to fake.

How is AI changing the way Keelvar supports customers?

AI handles 72.6% of Keelvar's customer contacts, which puts us well past the pilot stage. For context, the Freshworks report found that only 17.9% of software support teams have AI agents handling half or more of their queries, and 78.7% are still running pilots.

The point of AI support is not to remove people. It is to put them where they matter. AI absorbs the high-volume, repetitive questions in seconds. Our consultants and analysts, many of them former sourcing directors, take the complex, high-stakes problems that need real domain judgment. That is the model the industry is converging on, and it is the one our numbers are built on.

Most of what the AI handles is simple and urgent. How do I copy an event? Where do I upload my bid sheet? Why can't I see the lanes I was invited to? One right answer each, and the person asking needs it in seconds while they're sitting mid-event.

What I didn't expect is how far up it goes. Last month a sourcing lead asked how to run an RFI-only first round, gate the bid sheet behind a qualifying question, and then carry only the suppliers who passed into round two without the others knowing a second round had opened. The AI got all of it, including the bit people trip on, which is how to properly block and exclude bidders. Another buyer wanted every lot awarded to two or three suppliers, except some lots only had one bidder. The AI came back with a flexible split, a limit-winners rule and partial relaxation, then explained what the penalty value tells the optimizer to do when the rule can't be satisfied. That's a constraint modeling question. A year ago it would have required a human to review and respond.

My team still gets the ambiguous stuff, where a scenario isn't behaving the way someone expected and nobody can say why yet. That's the work I'd want a sourcing practitioner on anyway.

Dylan Alperin, Chief Customer Officer

Does Keelvar's support quality hold up as volume grows?

Yes. Since our AI support went live, total customer contacts have risen 117% while the number reaching a human has fallen 27%. The team absorbed more than double the demand and answered faster while doing it. Median resolution time is 3.6 hours so far in 2026, against 4.6 hours across the full 12 months, and overall SLA attainment moved from 95.8% in 2024 to 99.0% in 2025 to 99.9% so far this year. As our customer base grows, service quality has gone up, not down.

What do Keelvar customers say about support?

The benchmarks tell one story. Our customers tell the same one, in their own words on G2:

"The support response is fast and personalized, which brings agility to providers and facilitates their experience."
Logistics and Supply Chain, Enterprise

"Excellent customer support team to help you through the end-to-end event process."
Consumer Goods, Enterprise

"A Keelvar Consultant led me through the launch and award rounds for an event, and was able to share real-world experiences."
Sr. Procurement Insights Analyst

What should you ask a sourcing vendor about support?

Support is hard to judge from a demo. These four questions get past the pitch:

1. What is your first contact resolution rate? It shows whether the team understands sourcing problems well enough to answer correctly the first time, rather than bouncing customers through a queue.
2. What is your first response SLA, and how often do you meet it? Ask for actual results, not published targets.
3. Are AI-handled contacts averaged into your numbers? AI responses are fast, so blending them in can flatter the figures.
4. How has service quality changed as your customer base has grown? Support that scales should get better as volume rises, not worse.

The bottom line

In enterprise sourcing, support is what decides whether a platform becomes infrastructure or shelfware. Measured against a benchmark of 1.2 billion support tickets, our 2026 numbers say our customers are getting the part that matters most. When you evaluate a sourcing vendor, ask for theirs.

Want to see what Keelvar support looks like after go-live? Book a demo.

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Sources: Freshworks Customer Service Benchmark Report 2026, software and internet breakout; Keelvar internal support data (12 months to September 2026); Keelvar reviews on G2.

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