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You know, I think, if I ever became a millionaire, I might pay myself into a tech support job and do it the "right way," telling people what they actually need to know to help them, and ignoring my superiors (because I was paying their superiors.) That would be quite fun.

Actually, rethinking that, is there a company right now doing phone support the "right way?" Might be lucrative.

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I think the rigid support is a symptom and the malady is corporate bureaucracy. In order to fix this I think you'd have to find a company worth fixing and attack it from the top down.

If someone was really passionate about this it might be possible to fix it in one large company and use that as a halo case to sell their services to additional companies.

Zappos' support staff have a very good reputation.

Slicehost too, but I don't think they do phone support.

Zappos has amazing phone support. They require all employees from all departments to spend time talking to real customers. Even Tony, the CEO, does customer support calls.

The counterexample for bad rules in "The Knack" was the CEO of JetBlue, who served as the author's flight attendant on one of his flights; apparently, he used to do that a lot.

We use slicehost, and their phone support has been fantastic.

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