I had to design something like this recently for a consulting job and here's what I did. These steps were in addition to him writing a document that covered th

I had to design something like this recently for a consulting job and here's what I did. These steps were in addition to him writing a document that covered the basics of supporting the program (that he could give to support people) First, I convinced the client to not have phone support. My argument was that e-mail support was sufficient if you put a guarantee above the e-mail link (something like "every e-mail answered within an hour of being received") Second, I designed a very simple system that would allow him to hire freelance help. Basically all the support e-mails went to my custom e-mail program (I use .net and aspose components so it only took me a few hours). The e-mail program logs the question and when the support person e-mails a response it turns the response in to a knowledge base article (that the users could also view) Third, to further simplify the process I built a very simple keyword search into the e-mail program so that it could suggest solutions that might work to the support person. If the support person sees a solution they like they can send it as a reply with one click. Finally, I had him recruit people off Scriptlance. He created shifts where people could monitor the system while they were doing other things. Because they were from overseas and didn't have to speak fluent English (just write it) this labor was extremely cheap. They were then paid a flat fee plus extra for each support request. He ended up able to afford 3 people per shift, 24 hours a day with the same money he was going to pay to get one support person. Anyway, sorry for the long post but I really am kind of proud of the idea (now that I'm a few months out and I know that it worked). Hopefully if you can't do something like this it will at least help you to "think outside the box"