For many companies customer support can be handled simply with a customer support desk. Many of these consist of a few reps on one floor or in a corner of a floor. Others have enough call and contact volume to merit a separate dedicated center.

But other companies' may handle customer support by outsourcers, by teleworking reps, by counter, depot and field support with some support operations spread out amongst a network of support centers worldwide.

Complicating matters is what happens when your firm acquires another and your management decides to integrate the bought-out company's support centers with yours. This is necessary because not only does your new corporate 'little brother or sister' have their own products that would require time-consuming retraining for your reps, but also introduce into the support technical ecosystem problem management/resolution platforms that don't talk to yours.

In all of these cases you need to link these support operations and personnel together. And that won't be easy. With the spiders' web of voice and data pipes that must be connected to disparate technologies that often don't talk to each other (the biggest myth in technology is 'open' standards), in various buildings and rooms, the good consultants, systems integrators and IT staff that you can find to handle this work are, if anything, underpaid for their services.

Undertaking that work is like rewiring an old office building: you really don't know what's behind the walls, you're not sure where all the wires go...