Many companies now utilize live chat to help with tech support. Sometimes it’s better than phone support, because you can continue to do other things while you wait for the technician to respond to your latest message. And, issues like accented English become non-issues.
I can testify from personal experience that chat is the best way to correspond with Dell, for precisely the same reasons as Dwight notes. In addition, you’re less likely to lose your temper and say, er, type something stupid in a chat window.
Ed Bott 
I really like it too – you get a record so you can find that pesky url again when you need it a couple of days later and you don’t tend to get a lot of the troubleshooting scripts that you’d have to face if you called someone. The wait seems shorter too.
The only downside is that it is difficult to run on a w2k3 server due to the security mode of ie – but sometimes that is the only machine available to you.
Two words: COPY AND PASTE. Invaluable!