

Ask HN: Provide chat support on paid plan - angelohuang

Why do SaaS companies mostly offer email and phone support at paid plans, but not chat support?
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davismwfl
In my opinion it is about scale and expecations. Depending on the ratio of
active users per hour to the number of people capable of responding to chat
requests.

Email everyone expects is effectively a queue, whereas a Chat request users
expect to be answered quickly. If the application ration of users to support
staff is too high, the wait would be long for a chat request thereby creating
frustration for users which would then consider the support negatively, likely
driving up cancellations or complaints.

The terms usually state emails will be answered within 4 hrs for emergency, 24
for standard support etc. This allows the team to prioritize and manage the
workflow, versus Chat where it is very difficult to do that.

Phone support likewise is generally set for those high tiers where the ratio
of users to staff is manageable so this is acceptable as well. Additionally,
phone support might be the comfort of taking the support case, documenting it
and sending it to development/support. Which is a different expectation than
online Chat has for most people.

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angelohuang
What do you think about Twitter Support? It is a lot like chat support.

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dylz
Twitter is not chat support and should not be used for most purposes.

If I owned a company, I would not 1) want support tickets running public, 2)
want support tickets being available to twitter internal with private customer
data potentially in DMs.

Twitter is great for outreach though.

~~~
angelohuang
Do you mean you want a private ticket system? Most of ticket systems are not
public, I think.

