Part of what Businesses pay for is support. Heck think of all the free databases/open source stuff that is funded not by the code but buy offering support/integration.

EDIT: Funny though, as a consumer I'd pay a little more, say 20% more for my comcast bill if they had what I'd describe is "nice and helpful support", but if that was the case, my bill would likely be accurate, and we wouldn't have all these BS fees and charges showing up out of nowhere, which coincidentally can make my bill 20% higher then advertised.

It’s still usually viewed as a cost center by management in either case, and employees in support roles are notoriously underpaid, overworked and at risk of inexplicable layoffs.

I would love to see more companies treat support technicians and customer support agents like prized human capital, give them good job security, don’t try to outsource or downsize them, and give them top class compensation to make them very proud to do the job.

Google would disagree.

Support is a cost-center for most B2C companies.