Technological advances happen over time so technology adoption tends to be haphazard for companies that have been around for awhile. This includes the customer support center.

Phone support was offered and maintained by customer support. Then email became a support channel and was managed by marketing. Self Service then arrived and IT was made responsible for it. Then Live Chat became the next newest thing for support and a group from administrative services was in charge of it.

Each group has a different idea of how to support the customer and access to different databases with customer information, product or service information, and ticket status information. None are integrated. The messaging is all over the map.

Over time the customer support function has become siloed and customer service satisfaction has taken a nose dive. The responsibility for managing all of these customer support channels should be with a single group. I think that group should be the one that is used to dealing with customers, answering questions, and logging tickets: Customer Support.

According to the Aberdeen Group (Multi-Channel Service Delivery June 2010) "The contact center remains the major medium of issue resolution." This confirms the customer facing abilities of the contact center via phone support. The same techniques transfer well to other channels such as chat and email. Since customer support already has specific information they give out to customers, it would simplify information management if they also maintain the knowledge base in the self service center as well, to ensure consistency.