The thing I see is that the customers who are most likely to ask aggressively for things are the customers I want the least. It burns out your support resourc

The thing I see is that the customers who are most likely to ask aggressively for things are the customers I want the least. It burns out your support resources, and running a support organization is /hard/ - and it's really, really important. Running a support organization is hard because people who have both social skills and technical skills are... well, they are very, very valuable, and quickly price themselves out of what you usually pay support. Most people focus on one or the other (the technical or the social) - so usually you end up hiring either socially optimized folk and try to automate (or teach) the technical side, or take the technically optimized, and try to put a level one 'shield'(of folks with social skills) in front of them) You also get huge levels of burn-out in support. I think this gets worse the more you try to stick with policy (as opposed to "just help the customer") - at least for me, it's really rough when I'm supposed to just get the guy off the phone, rather than solve a problem. Even in the best of times, doing support is rough; everyone you encounter has a problem with your service. The phone support desks for larger services are usually places people go to become cynical. My /goal/ (and I don't achieve this goal very often) is to go out of my way for customers who ask in a way that is easy for me to deal with on a logistical/emotional level (yeah, emotions are important here; I have... limited support resources) - and then to be more "well, this is policy" for the more aggressive, harder to deal with customers. The hard part is that the customers who are best of all... those who don't ask for any extra attention at all, are the hardest to give something 'extra' to. (now, I can identify about 10 ways that I'm failing those customers right now... I'm just saying, it's harder to know what people want when they are not aggressive about it... but those are the folks who burn the least customer service resources, both in the 'use' and 'burn out' senses.)