Support levels sometimes unavoidable
I agree that support is always an issue when budgets are reviewed. With cost-cutting we could only deploy Level 1 support which ends up putting pressure on the developers themselves and ultimately disrupting development which I was responsible for. I jumped in and managed all issues requiring Level 3 support but Level 1 always ends up being overwhelmed with nowhere to funnel all the issues requiring expert knowledge without giving additional training (and incurring additional costs) to the Level 1 support members which lands us back at square 1.
End-users support is always a "must" in my book because this yields the greatest return with immediate value for the client and needs to be re-thinked in terms of budgets and short-and-long term goals.
