[the_alchemist]

Isn't this tiered support a necessity when operating at scale? How can you help thousands of customers where faqs and getting starteds don't cut it? You need a filtering mechanism (L1) to help users directly without overloading the product team with a standard reply rtfm.

[benoau]

It's triaging the support so the people who are best-capable of answering specific things don't waste all their time answering the stuff a new hire can take care of after one week training.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

If you're operating at scale you hire at scale. How do you suppose Target staffs their "at scale" brick and mortar stores?

[ahtihn]

Yes, you hire L1 support staff at scale. You don't hire product developers to handle the scale.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

No one said to hire developers. Even L1 phone support would be a great improvement

[andrewaylett]

Two layers is fine, so long as they're allowed to talk to each other. Adding a third causes a lot more problems.

Once you get beyond having a single dev team, a layer of support is necessary: you can't expect consumers to know which of your dev teams they ought to be talking to.

My employer has an amazing support team, who are effective champions for the user when interacting with development teams. They're fantastic.

[jasonjayr]

That's an important requirement of an effective support team: they have to have a seat at the project management's table. They have to have the power to request features + changes from developers, at the same priority level as the rest of the product development team. IMHO it's important both for the support team morale, as well as ensuring a positive UX.

[andrewaylett]

At a higher priority level, IMO.

That said, most of the issues I see from support are straightforwardly bugs, even if they're not normally easy ones to fix. But when they have information they think is worth sharing, it's always been worth my time to listen.