This is the usual response when a companies customer numbers start to scale up so far that the volume of users like the ones in Vegenoid's parent comment start to overwhelm the support staff. Keeping up the good/decent customer support that you could give to your first few hundred or perhaps even few thousand users eventually becomes ludicrously expensive or even impossible.
Then the original article's "Keeping this running and supported is shit. People are idiots and time wasters! Automate all the things!" stage kicks in.
So "first level support" is created, who's main objective is to get rid of support requests with the minimal effort by the least skilled staff possible. So everything is written into a script that call centre employees are required to follow. Low skill minimal wage staff are required to ask stupid things like "Have you tried reinstalling Windows?" and getting a confirmation that they have - before any support request is passed on to even a junior or intern developer. At this stage nobody gives a damn about users who need help, and they outsource that work to other users on the "community forums" and the entire support team is fired.
(Google, of course, being a world leader in both webtech and customer acquisition, completely skipped the "provide decent customer service" stage and went directly to the "don't give a damn about users" end game.)
This is the usual response when a companies customer numbers start to scale up so far that the volume of users like the ones in Vegenoid's parent comment start to overwhelm the support staff. Keeping up the good/decent customer support that you could give to your first few hundred or perhaps even few thousand users eventually becomes ludicrously expensive or even impossible.
Then the original article's "Keeping this running and supported is shit. People are idiots and time wasters! Automate all the things!" stage kicks in.
So "first level support" is created, who's main objective is to get rid of support requests with the minimal effort by the least skilled staff possible. So everything is written into a script that call centre employees are required to follow. Low skill minimal wage staff are required to ask stupid things like "Have you tried reinstalling Windows?" and getting a confirmation that they have - before any support request is passed on to even a junior or intern developer. At this stage nobody gives a damn about users who need help, and they outsource that work to other users on the "community forums" and the entire support team is fired.
(Google, of course, being a world leader in both webtech and customer acquisition, completely skipped the "provide decent customer service" stage and went directly to the "don't give a damn about users" end game.)