There are a number of implications here. First, if the user had to pay the actual cost of problem resolution, he would opt for the first-line fix, because it’s massively cheaper – and the fact that he would make that choice means that logically, second-line problem resolution must be a separate service. But another implication goes right to the heart of how we structure and finance IT services. For as long as there has been user support, we have persisted in this topsy-turvy nonsense of paying our second-line technicians more than our first line, when it is plainly obvious, in pure business terms, that the first line brings in a hugely greater return on investment. We even give license to this. We think it’s normal and acceptable that our better technicians should be freed from telephone duty. Hands up all those who have ever heard a second-line technician utter words to the effect that they don’t go on the phones any more. A commercial consideration of that abdication must lead us to the conclusion that somebody with that attitude is too expensive to hire. If we put our best technicians on the telephones, they will have a higher first-time-fix rate because they are more technically competent – and that means we will fix more problems at a cost of two quid and fewer at a cost of sixteen quid. If I were the king of IT services, I would issue a royal decree that second-line staff who don’t go on the phones get paid less than first-line staff, because they generate a poorer return on investment. And I would make subsidizing low productivity in the second line a punishable offence. In my regal wisdom, I would accept that some problems are trickier to solve and thus require greater expertise, which costs more. But I would not thereby accept that just because there were some people with greater expertise, I had to put them in a department further away from the customer, because that wouldn’t make business sense.