

Ask HN: Do you think phone support is needed? - northband

Today our payment processor shut us down w&#x2F;o much, if any, warning and a very vague reason.  To make matters worse, though we made several attempts to contact them we got zero help.  I did eventually contact a staffer via Twitter who told me &#x27;someone was looking into it&#x27; but that was it.  So we spent the day checking email, twitter, and logs looking for some sort of sign that we&#x27;re back up.  Not fun...<p>Putting aside we were down for a day, and the fact we&#x27;ve done around .5M of business with them so far this year, we have no way of contacting them via phone.<p>I&#x27;ve been a champion of the concept of not providing phone support, instead use email - providing email is fast and reliable.  However, after today I&#x27;m having second thoughts.<p>Over the last few years I&#x27;ve seen more and more substantially successful companies not offering phone support.  This idea has been interesting to me as I think its not only cool but efficient.<p>For instance, in many cases phone support may be just a place for a customer to take out their frustrations, not really helping matters or delivering a solution any quicker.  In my experience I often can help people out quicker via email because it saves me the emotional drama.<p>However, I think in order for this to be successful, email or web chat support needs to be efficient.  I&#x27;m talking turn-around time in minutes not hours or worse yet days.<p>Even if a solution can&#x27;t be resolved quickly, a customer should be notified that the issue is being worked on.  Metaphorically speaking, not doing such is like not providing a spinner or progress bar when doing a lengthy web request.  It builds tension - tension needs resolved.<p>That being said - more companies seem to be doing this.  I&#x27;m asking the HN community on their opinion of this trend.  Perhaps this will shed light on the concept and spike those doing it to be speedier on their emails ;-).<p>Do you think phone support is needed?
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CyberFonic
In cases such as yours, you need more than phone support. You need a Customer
Relations Manager, aka Account Manager.

The problem is that company execs conflate phone support for the masses with
phone support for those upon whom valuable business is conducted. The problem
with phone support for the masses is that there is a vocal minority who waste
considerable phone support resources due to their ignorance, stupidity,
reluctance to read anything or even attempt to understand anything. Anybody
who has worked on phone support will tell stories, often over beers, about
"customers" ringing up and abusing them for situations which basically stem
from them not reading even the most rudimentary "READ THIS FIRST" material.

Instead of having a robotic voice answer your calls with "your call is
important to us" it would be great if companies actually acted acted in a
manner consistent with their core value of "Your business is important to us"
and the more business you give them, the more they show that you are important
to them. _Actions do speak louder than words._

~~~
northband
I agree.

In our case it would be nice to have an account manager. As far as phone
support I think the idea itself is comforting, however, it doesn't mean a
solution is going to be fixed any quicker.

Regardless of the means - whatever you use has to work. I can't recall what it
was but I had some sort of situation where you had to call and leave a message
for support (ISP maybe?). The idea seemed ridiculous, but I was assured that
it would work. Low and behold, it did - this business promptly returned calls
and sorted out support issues. SO despite the weirdness of it, it did in fact
work.

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northband
UPDATE: As it turns out they had bad contact info to contact us when the issue
first occurred. So in all fairness they did make an attempt to get ahold of
us. However, there still is the issue of handling support when you need it.
Meaning, there has to be a way to support your users during a time of crisis
vs. simple blackout - no matter who's a fault etc...

