Customer support an activa or a burden

Is there a point to ignoring customer support if it can be done for negligible additional cost.  Many companies sees customer support as a way of retaining previous customer so they come back for more.  Other sees it as a legal requirement that must be bared.  Some see it as a way of making their business stand out from the crowd.  Other sees it as nothing but a cost. 

Support can be done for little or no money.  A faq on your website is the easiest sample.  It takes little time to assemble a list of possible questions and answers about your product.  Other is more resource depending.  Like having somebody actually answering questions that customers communicate in, but it can be made profitable by making the customer pay extra for the privilege.  Sample support contracts, or a callcenter with a premium phone line.  Selling insurance can also be a way of taking payment for your support, or outsourcing to a 3’rd party.   A modern way in the internet age is to facilitate a live question and answer page where the answers are provided by 3’rd party agents who finance their time by leading you to additional paid for ads or services.    

Some forms of support can be seen as profit reducing.  In the shadier side of business a sample can be telling potential customers how to avoid the built in pitfalls in the purchasing process so they can reach the best bargains.  Here there is a fine line between naturally occurring issues with the purchasing process and deliberately engineering profit making problems.  Alternatively not prioritising fixing issues when they are discovered.  Luckily for your customer, if your business is very large there is 3’rd parties at hand, let’s call them agents or facilitators, that will help them overcome/bypass the issues, for a fee of course.  Thank’s to the help of the search engine many websites can also be found that will help a frustrated customer.  If you are a business owner you will have your work cut out finding them and let’s say ensuring that they are corrected.

Is no customer support a bad thing.  Not necessarily if you have a unique selling point that brings customers back to you regardless.  Sample if you are a monopolist, they who want your product has no choice and  have to buy from you if they want that product.  This is one of the reasons monopolies are frowned upon legally.  They take a lot of time an effort to police to avoid questionable profiteering.