Our policies on responding are obviously not that rigid and I would never chastise a customer for contacting anyone. If the manager at one location has a quick question, by all means; I would almost say out loud I encourage it. I would rather they call our tech than call a competitor.
There is a lot of merit to the point - That phone call is taking time away from a different customer. A lot. Our technicians are not allowed to take a phone inside unless they are calling tech support. The customer you are with right now is the only customer you have.
I consider us, most of us in fact, to be a boutique company. Nearly all of us are boutique providers. Within our firm, we offer different levels of service that are tailored for that customer, based on their desires.
An example is that customer A wants a 2 hour response time with a 72 hour resolution time. It is in writing and we staff accordingly. Everyone gets trained, inventory is on-hand, accordingly.
Some within Customer A's organization would just as soon call the tech directly; they have a personal relationship. I get that and I respect it. It has tremendous value. But Customer A should not complain too much if Customer A (1) decides to circumvent the system designed to meet their response criteria. It will skew the metrics, but everyone is happy.
It has little to do with profits actually. Almost nothing in fact.
We have taken great care to craft a system that offers the customer an excellent experience and it will continue to evolve. But if they knowingly choose not to follow that system, it stands to reason they will not get the same experience.
In short, there is a small part of me that says if you want to go it alone, don't complain. But I can't do that. It is neither responsible nor practical. So I have to devise and find ways to induce them (all of them) to follow their rules. That is really the point of the post.
Since posting the topic, I have decided to make it easier to request services. Our ticketing system has an email-to-ticket system (e2t2) we have never employed. The customer generates an email to a "service" email address and a ticket is automatically generated. That puts the request directly in our "system". I will introduce it to our customers with some sort of crafted "Customer Message" At the end of the day all I can do, or should do, is make it as easy as possible to do business with us.
Will it fix everything? No. But it will continue to evolve. Thanks, everyone!