This works well when your users are technical. On a IPTV project I worked on the support process for our customers' network engineers was to call my cellphone.

This works well when your users are technical. On a IPTV project I worked on the support process for our customers' network engineers was to call my cellphone. On a CCTV project where some users barley knew how to use a computer and one (not uncommon) problem was that user stopped paying the bill it didn't make sense to spend development time on 99% of support calls. IMO the trend towards insulating developers is more of a reflection on how "mass market" technology is now compared to in decades passed than anything else.