[CyberFonic]

In cases such as yours, you need more than phone support. You need a Customer Relations Manager, aka Account Manager.

The problem is that company execs conflate phone support for the masses with phone support for those upon whom valuable business is conducted. The problem with phone support for the masses is that there is a vocal minority who waste considerable phone support resources due to their ignorance, stupidity, reluctance to read anything or even attempt to understand anything. Anybody who has worked on phone support will tell stories, often over beers, about "customers" ringing up and abusing them for situations which basically stem from them not reading even the most rudimentary "READ THIS FIRST" material.

Instead of having a robotic voice answer your calls with "your call is important to us" it would be great if companies actually acted acted in a manner consistent with their core value of "Your business is important to us" and the more business you give them, the more they show that you are important to them. Actions do speak louder than words.

[northband]

I agree.

In our case it would be nice to have an account manager. As far as phone support I think the idea itself is comforting, however, it doesn't mean a solution is going to be fixed any quicker.

Regardless of the means - whatever you use has to work. I can't recall what it was but I had some sort of situation where you had to call and leave a message for support (ISP maybe?). The idea seemed ridiculous, but I was assured that it would work. Low and behold, it did - this business promptly returned calls and sorted out support issues. SO despite the weirdness of it, it did in fact work.