Great vs. good support organizations?

What distinguishes great support organizations from good ones?

Process
Great support organizations follow a process. Irrespective of where the teams are located, these organizations are bound to follow a process. These serve as guidelines in tackling simple or complex problems. This also serves as a means for management to measure and maintain the quality of support. It also enables support personnel to deal with escalations. Anyone in the organization should know what the "next step" is in the support process. Nothing is more detrimental than the classic "run around" to the customer.

Metrics
Great support organizations are measured by metrics. These metrics might be as simple as measuring incoming cases, case closure, time to closure or number of cases escalated to R&D. Metrics gives support management a tool to monitor the effectiveness of support. It also promotes accountability in the ranks. Finally it might point out problematic areas in the product offering.

Soft skills
This is like the icing on the cake. All individuals are different. Some individuals who have better people interaction than others are likely to satisfy customers more, other things remaining constant. Soft skills give individuals the ability to connect with the customer at an emotional level besides the logical/technical support they provide. These include a variety of skills such as listening, saying no to the customer, dealing with abusive customers, phone/email communication skills and much more. Great support organizations heavily emphasize soft skills and routinely emphasize soft skill training.

Training
Technical or product training is essential for addressing customer needs. Customers log cases to get solutions to problems they have. Nothing can tick off a customer more than a support individual who does not know what they are doing. Incompetence in product knowledge leads to inferior support, delayed problem resolution or escalation - either one of these being detrimental to the organization. As product content changes, the support team should be kept abreast of the latest developments using training. Great support organizations put high emphasis on replenishing the skill set of support teams.

Knowledge Base
In order to decrease the support load on an organization, knowledge bases are developed. Ideally, a knowledge database should enable self service and 24/7 access for the customer.
This should also act as a filler to enable complete product coverage by the support team. Great support organizations will push customers to self-service databases as a first step and supplement that with other kinds of (email, web, phone, direct) support. This helps keep support cost down if done right.

Tiered support structure
Great support organizations will distinguish between customers based on significance (financial or strategic) to the corporation. Generally speaking in most corporations, the 80/20 rule applies. Eighty percent of the business comes from twenty percent of the customer base. Should these "Top 10" customers be treated differently. Absolutely. This is a business decision vs. an emotional one. Executive management should definitely put the same process in terms of providing support for everyone but monitor the top 10 customers closely. Bigger customers can be expected to "pay" for support and get "additional" perks besides the "regular" support. This might include more frequent review meetings, priority in fixing issues, executive sponsorship and perhaps even access to R&D.

Corporate Strategy
Great organizations will emphasize support as a key corporate function not as an afterthought.
They will realize that excellent support is often a key contributor to repeat business and customer loyalty. They will also view support as a feedback loop for product improvement and best practice promotion. Great support organizations can be an important source of revenue generation as well. Clear goals and organization structure coupled with clear lines of communication will foster this.