This BusinessWeek article relates that Jason Knight, CEO of web start up Wesabe is available to speak to customers for four hours every day. He gets three or four calls a day directed from a link on the Wesabe home page. That's from a user base of 100,000 people.

Knight says that this policy was driven by the need to build trust among customers, I'll bet it also keeps him tightly tuned into his customer's needs and pain points. All without a market researcher in sight.

Tags: Wesabe, customer service