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> Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too. A lot of companies basically deny you service unless you call.

by yosito 4y ago

Gigachad 4y ago
It’s because emails continue to queue up and it’s impossible to answer them all. While people will actively avoid calling if at all possible and will drop off if it’s not important.
- posguy 4y ago
  Sounds like shithole company behavior at its finest, who cares about responding to support queries after all? Cheaper to not backfill vacant support positions than engage with actually supporting your products.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Because you’ll find that support requests have various levels of importance. From “I’d like to change my account/billing” down to “something weird happened, can you explain this”, to “can you show me how to use this feature”. It would cost a fortune to pay support and developers to launch a full investigation every time something funny happens. So having slow support encourages users to only call if it’s reproducible and a real problem.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Every company has finite time to give to support even if they heavily invest in it and people continually demonstrate how bad they are at basically everything. People treat emails to people they deem less important than them as asynchronous to be dealt with whenever and emails TO such folks as synchronous to be dealt with immediately. If not given immediate response they are liable to forget about it until its convenient for them to deal with it again and if the response is again not immediate they will forget about it again. People's initial problem statement may be insufficient to even establish identity let alone nature of problem and solution. This is usually established by repeated follow up questions sometimes repeating questions to get the actual answer because it turns out they had no idea about the actual answer or indeed don't know what words mean. Due to both of the above even simple issues are likely to become 12 step marathons with the associated cost of context switching to their problem 12 times. Worse due to the low cost of initiating an exchange they are likely to do so even when they could have resolved the issue in 10 seconds with google or even turning their head into the on position. Your suggestion would turn a well funded support center into a team of professional shit shovelers trying to clean the Aegean stables with teaspoons. An actual call queue intentionally and constantly drops matters too unimportant to invest 5-10 minutes in resolving and makes people do the whole shebang in one go by having them answer the follow up questions now.

> Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too. A lot of companies basically deny you service unless you call.

by yosito 4y ago

> Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too. A lot of companies basically deny you service unless you call.

Gigachad 4y ago

It’s because emails continue to queue up and it’s impossible to answer them all. While people will actively avoid calling if at all possible and will drop off if it’s not important.

posguy 4y ago
Sounds like shithole company behavior at its finest, who cares about responding to support queries after all? Cheaper to not backfill vacant support positions than engage with actually supporting your products.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Because you’ll find that support requests have various levels of importance. From “I’d like to change my account/billing” down to “something weird happened, can you explain this”, to “can you show me how to use this feature”. It would cost a fortune to pay support and developers to launch a full investigation every time something funny happens. So having slow support encourages users to only call if it’s reproducible and a real problem.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Every company has finite time to give to support even if they heavily invest in it and people continually demonstrate how bad they are at basically everything. People treat emails to people they deem less important than them as asynchronous to be dealt with whenever and emails TO such folks as synchronous to be dealt with immediately. If not given immediate response they are liable to forget about it until its convenient for them to deal with it again and if the response is again not immediate they will forget about it again. People's initial problem statement may be insufficient to even establish identity let alone nature of problem and solution. This is usually established by repeated follow up questions sometimes repeating questions to get the actual answer because it turns out they had no idea about the actual answer or indeed don't know what words mean. Due to both of the above even simple issues are likely to become 12 step marathons with the associated cost of context switching to their problem 12 times. Worse due to the low cost of initiating an exchange they are likely to do so even when they could have resolved the issue in 10 seconds with google or even turning their head into the on position. Your suggestion would turn a well funded support center into a team of professional shit shovelers trying to clean the Aegean stables with teaspoons. An actual call queue intentionally and constantly drops matters too unimportant to invest 5-10 minutes in resolving and makes people do the whole shebang in one go by having them answer the follow up questions now.