The problem with customer service being 'separate' is that it quickly loses value. In that sense, OP is correct but one needs to take it further. Once you supp

The problem with customer service being 'separate' is that it quickly loses value. In that sense, OP is correct but one needs to take it further. Once you support a customer, you are supposed to help her for more than just 2 days! You need to take it to conclusion regardless of who you are, even if it means that it takes days or weeks. The best part of that - you build a relationship with that person and if its a B2B thing then you could even add them on LinkedIn, right? ;-) Heck, you could even do some Marketing/Sales for your company and ask them for a testimonial about how good the customer service was! There are even tools for such things - Customer Rivet (http://www.customer-rivet.com http://www.customer-rivet.com), or Testimonial Monkey (http://www.testimonialmonkey.com http://www.testimonialmonkey.com) etc.. End of the day, what I learnt (the hard way) is that you need to support customers not just because its company policy but because it helps you out personally.