It's more than that. The bulk of your support time for a typical consumer business, if you allow it, will be taken up by people who are lonely, mentally ill or

It's more than that. The bulk of your support time for a typical consumer business, if you allow it, will be taken up by people who are lonely, mentally ill or extremely upset and want to express themselves to someone face-to-face. These people are much easier to ignore via email, and almost no consumer problem actually requires an immediate verbal response. Outside of certain niche applications like banking or B2B, I have no idea why most businesses offer call centres at all.