When I started in my role at developer support at Google, I was actually a remote part-time contractor with no access to internal code, mail, or tools. But, I was still able to provide decent support by being highly communicative between the engineering team and the developer world, using emails, forum posts, and weekly phone calls.
So, I do think it's possible to outsource a certain level of support without codebase access, provided that there is a good communication line setup.
Oh, definitely, I'm just trying to see what the level of support is. Obviously it can't be as good as having the actual developers provide support, but I'd like to see how close to or far from that it is.
So, I do think it's possible to outsource a certain level of support without codebase access, provided that there is a good communication line setup.