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Come on with the phone number zealotry. It's very hard as a rapidly growing small-medium sized business to provide great phone service (on the level of being ab
by ericd 13y ago
Come on with the phone number zealotry. It's very hard as a rapidly growing small-medium sized business to provide great phone service (on the level of being able to fix random problems on the spot), and if you can't provide great phone service, it's generally better to stick to asynchronous online methods where you can provide better service.
- Mithaldu 13y agoI'm not sure if my post wasn't clear enough. Let me try and rephrase: It's fine to deny phone support by default and demand usage of online tools. However if you don't provide a phone number for emergencies and cases where you fucked up, you don't take business seriously. Doesn't mean i think you shouldn't do business. Simply means i won't trust you with anything remotely important.
- justin66 13y agoThe trouble with providing a phone number which is only intended for emergencies is that customers will learn that they can call it for ANYTHING. And woe to the company that says "That doesn't sound very serious! This number is only for emergencies, can you please send us an email? Bye now."
- Mithaldu 13y agoThat's a matter of bad training.
- justin66 13y agoNo. The situation of any phone support professional who is under management pressure to both provide quality service and filter out "unimportant" requests is untenable. The quality of support will end up sucking. The "serious problem phone support only" thing is a nice, MBAish compromise idea that won't work well. Everyone thinks their problems are serious. The way to make this work is to provide a phone support number AND to make the web- and app-based support tools work so well customers won't feel a need to call it very often.
- Mithaldu 13y agoI don't agree with your first statement, but i'm totally fine with your conclusion.
- robryk 13y agoIf you provide a phone number for emergencies, it will be used for non-emergencies by the most irritating kind of customer (`every problem of mine is an emergency!').