At one level or another I have been doing customer support my entire working life. Over that time I have developed a hatred for abuse of customer support as well as a intense desire to fix it.
You may not even know that you are abusing your support staff. You may be nice and pleasant to them and they may be nice and pleasant to you. But, that doesn't mean they jump for joy when they see you walking up to their desk.
Generally speaking, I'm seen as an "asshole" at $CURRENTJOB. I'm ok with this. However, my goal is not to be mean or unhelpful in any way. I've learn over my career that a support staff that, at least on the surface, appears to be "assholes" is the quickest way to get people to learn how to effectively interact with their support staff. Of course, once you learn how to effectively interact with your support staff, they wont seem like such assholes anymore. I may be totally wrong about this. But, I've yet to see any evidence of it.
So, I want to apologize to anyone that ever thought I was treating them like I was an unhelpful, down right mean, asshole. However, I'd also like it noted that if you followed the simple rules laid out below you would have been much happier with my response. Your unwillingness to help me so I can help you makes us both useless. For that I am deeply sorry.
When using your support staff to solve an issue understand that your first interaction with them has more influence over their success with your issue than anything else. Here are the rules you MUST follow when dealing with any support staff.
1) Open a ticket
Don't stop by their desk, send them a direct email, IM them, or give them a call.
The main reason for tickets is to have a paper trail of the entire issue and resolution. This is REQUIRED by all support staff for a reason most people never think of. Your issue is not the only issue. You see, support staff have to switch between issues all day long. "The printer doesn't work." "Excel keeps crashing." "Email doesn't work on my phone anymore." "I need a new laptop." Lots of unrelated issues all day. Even the best support staff cannot keep it all straight. Honestly, if your support staff can even remember what day of the week it is, let alone what your issue is, they are doing good.
Another reason for opening a ticket first is that generally there is more than open person that can help you. By opening a ticket more than just "your" support guy can see it and may be able to help. Remember, just because "your" support guy always "does a better job" it doesn't mean the rest of their team is useless. On a side note, if you can name "your" support guy I'm going to tell you right now that you are over working them and their heart sinks every time you come up to their desk.
2) The worst sin you can commit with your support staff is being vague
If you think your support staff is too slow and is trying to delay by playing "ticket tag" with back and forth messages never leading to a solution, just keep one thing in mind. In most cases this is entirely your fault.
Opening a ticket that has a complete content of 'When I do X I get an error" is totally useless. The first thing support staff is going to think when they see this is "Well, WTF is the error". It will also be their first reply to your request. All though they will most likely phrase it a bit nicer.
Details, details, details. Give the error message. A screenshot never hurts. Include as much detail as you can so your support staff can reproduce the error. The more detail you give the faster you're going to get a solution. Also, you will likely get ahead of the line. You see, while your support staff is waiting for details on a high priority ticket, they can work on your low priority (but very detailed) ticket. Shhh.. That's a secret.
3) The second worst sin you can commit with your support staff is lying about the importance of your request
It's important to you. It may be the most important thing in your world. Support staff understand that. However, the importance level for your issue should be set based on the importance to the entire company.
The fact that you forgot your password and locked out your email account may be important to you. However, a server that is on fire may be just a little more important to your company at the moment.
4) "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." -god
Support staff spend at least some of their time planning for the worst case situation. They do this because they want desperately to avoid those situations and to recover from them quickly when they do happen. Why don't you do the same.
Why leave everything to the last minute? Your support staff is not there to be your personal "ass saver". If you need the video conferencing equipment for a meeting, don't wait until 5 minutes before it starts to ask your support staff to get it working. If you've know that a project needs your support staff to do something a month from now, tell them now and don't expect them to do it with 10 minutes notice.