My question came out of wanting to improve the support that we offer customers. Currently we have an FAQ (that is just getting started) and a forum system.

My issue with the forums is it sometimes feels like organized chaos. I don't always find them efficient for finding what I am looking for and sometimes feel like I spend too much time searching for an answer. This is my experience with most support forums.

What got me interested in exploring other options was this post on the 37Signals blog about their new Answers system.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2122-launch-37signals-answers

They are basically blending a Question and Answer system into what effectively becomes a FAQ system powered by user submitted questions. Duplicating what 37signals has done as a WordPress Plugin would be pretty cool.

My issue with this is I don't think it would work paired with a Forum. As you mentioned, you can't do all of them... so what combination works best?