Primary and secondary support vendors 20 and 30 provide support for an application 15 running on a customer computer system 11. Diagnostic software 17 running on the customer computer system gathers diagnostic data, which is transmitted to the primary-support vendor's computer system 21. There, the diagnostic data is analyzed to determine whether the help of the secondary support vendor is required. If so, the diagnostic data is repackaged for transmission to the secondary support vendor. The results of the secondary analysis are returned to the primary support vendor's computer system and used to generate a proposed solution, which is made available to the customer 10.