When CEOs think about mergers and acquisitions (M&A), due diligence usually means combing through financial statements, assessing market share, or reviewing legal risks. Those areas are critical—but they don’t tell the whole story. Hidden in plain sight is one of the most valuable due diligence resources you can access: the customer support queue.
Support data isn’t just about answering tickets. It’s a direct view into customer satisfaction and retention, product quality, and the company’s ability to scale. Overlooking this data during due diligence is like inspecting a house without ever checking the foundation.
Here’s why the support queue belongs at the center of your M&A playbook.
Support Data: A Hidden Source of Truth
Customer support tickets are a living record of the customer experience. While quarterly business reviews and customer success updates present polished summaries, support data offers unfiltered, real-time insights into how customers actually feel.
Analyzing the queue during M&A due diligence allows you to uncover issues that no third-party report or leadership presentation will flag. Think of it as looking under the hood before you buy the car.
1. The True State of the Product
One of the clearest indicators of a company’s operational health is the volume and nature of bug-related support tickets. If a mature company is drowning in technical issues, that points to hidden technical debt—a liability that will cost you in engineering hours, support staffing, and eventually, customer churn.
For M&A leaders, this isn’t just a “nice-to-know.” It directly impacts valuation. A business with chronic product issues will require more resources to stabilize post-acquisition, changing the true cost of the deal.
2. Growth Potential in the Support Queue
Support tickets also shine a light on expansion opportunities. Look for patterns around upsell inquiries or feature requests. If customers are actively asking for additional functionality—but the business has no structured account management process—that’s a growth lever waiting to be pulled.
For a CEO evaluating an acquisition, this is encouraging news: it means your post-M&A strategy can include building or strengthening a support-driven customer success function that directly improves revenue.
3. Roadmap Misalignment
A smart acquirer should also compare feature request tickets with the company’s product roadmap. If the roadmap and customer needs are out of sync, it’s a red flag. Misalignment signals deeper organizational challenges, whether that’s weak product leadership or a lack of customer-centric culture.
During M&A due diligence, this kind of insight helps you see beyond numbers into the organization’s DNA—are they truly customer-driven, or simply shipping features in a vacuum?
The Emotional Pulse of Customer Satisfaction
Support queues aren’t just data points—they capture the raw emotions of the customer base. Unlike curated testimonials, tickets reveal frustration, loyalty, or indifference in real time. This is especially valuable during M&A because customer satisfaction is directly tied to retention, churn prevention, and long-term enterprise value.
1. Spotting At-Risk Accounts
If support tickets show repeat complaints from accounts that aren’t flagged as “at-risk,” you may be looking at a flawed customer health scoring model. That misstep could mean the company underestimates churn risk—a problem that can dramatically affect the revenue you’re acquiring.
On the other hand, quickly identifying these gaps during due diligence positions you to fix them post-acquisition, protecting revenue and strengthening customer satisfaction.
2. Evaluating True Customer Loyalty
Not all happy customers are created equal. Some are genuinely enthusiastic, while others are quietly shopping for alternatives. Support data helps distinguish between the two. By reviewing sentiment in tickets, you’ll learn which customers are referenceable champions versus those who are one frustrating ticket away from leaving.
For CEOs navigating M&A, this insight is invaluable for customer retention strategies post-close. Retaining and expanding existing customers is often the fastest way to prove value creation in the first 100 days.
Why Support Matters in M&A
Too often, CEOs rely solely on financial advisors, consultants, or high-level diligence reports to assess a deal. Those documents are important—but they lack the day-to-day reality of how customers interact with the business.
Support tickets, by contrast, offer direct evidence of customer satisfaction, operational resilience, and future risk. They reveal the true cost of integration and highlight where opportunities lie for immediate growth.
Final Word
In M&A, due diligence must go beyond the spreadsheets. The support queue is not a minor detail—it’s a critical priority. As a CEO, insisting on access to this data gives you an unfiltered view of the product, the customers, and the company’s ability to deliver on its promises.
Ultimately, support-driven insights will help you avoid costly surprises, improve customer satisfaction, and accelerate value creation after the deal closes. In today’s competitive M&A environment, that edge can be the difference between a successful acquisition and an expensive misstep.
