Did you read the instructions?

We have all at one time or another been in this situation. I mean its just a shelving unit right? We all like to believe that we are capable of figuring things out and that we don't need help. For most things that would be true, but if time is money, then its a different story. Service groups are like insurance; you need to have it but hope you never need to use it. However, when you do finally need them, you hope (and expect) that you have a qualified/empathetic/responsive person available to assist you.

For a lot of customers, services are viewed as a 'nice to have' and often purchase less than what they need or wait until a major incident before looking into them.
For most service companies there is a tenuous balance between having a quality, skilled service group and keeping the operational costs in check. The result is a varying degree of service (between companies and sometimes withing a company) and an unrealistic expectation on part of the customers (do you really need 24x7 support for your toaster oven?).

Most service groups are developed and grown on a reactive basis so are unable to take advantage of having consistent procedures and being able to clearly identify objectives ahead of time. Kind of like reading the instruction manual after you already spent 3 hours trying to figure out the problem.