Pros and Cons of Removing Email as a Support Channel | Community
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Pros and Cons of Removing Email as a Support Channel

  • June 2, 2022
  • 8 replies
  • 0 views
T

I've noticed a trend of some larger SaaS companies like WPEngine and Zendesk deciding to go all in on live chat / bots and remove email as a support channel, including the removal of "support@domain.com" type emails.  

I'm sure there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this, but as I'm looking at future support strategies for my software business, I'd like to understand:

- What are the main benefits (for our company and/or our customers) of shutting off email support and requiring all help through live chat?  Does it actually lower ticket volume and/or time per ticket? 

- Is there a risk that existing customers find it frustrating to lose the email support option and churn?  

I'd be curious if anyone with a smaller customer service operation has tried this recently and what it did to their support volume, metrics, and/or churn. As a customer, it seems like this is an ongoing trend, so I'd like to understand the rationale and plan our support channels better. My current thinking is to meet customers where they are (within reason) including email support. 

Thanks, 

Tom 

    8 replies

    T
    • Tom12
    • June 2, 2022

    Looking at it from a customer perspective I would have to say that this very much depends on the complexity of support given.

    For complex software questions I cannot imagine relying only on chat support, as I would like to have a thread I can follow to make sure all steps needed are included, properly explained and something I can follow to get my issue resolved.

    For simple tech support or general customer service, chat seems to be the way to go in terms of efficiency.

    Lou11
    • Lou11
    • June 2, 2022

    I don't believe Zendesk removed it. I still get emails from them and respond to them. My responses go into the chat.

    T
    • Tom31
    • Author
    • June 2, 2022

    Thanks for both your comments.... that is interesting, you may be on a better pricing plan. I'm not able to send emails to support@zendesk.com anymore (it bounces back with a reply) and get forced to use the chatbot / live chat option instead. I've noticed that Twilio Sendgrid has recently phased out their email support as well. 

    I think we'll experiment with live chat and in-app messaging but continue to offer email support. 

    Lou11
    • Lou11
    • June 3, 2022

    @tom31

    I don't email support@zendesk.com, so I don't know if that works for me. I open tickets through the (awful) chat. I then get email updates, which I can reply to. When I do, those replies go right into the (did I mention it's awful)chat. The reply to email address on those is support+idxxxxx@zendesk.com. The received from is support@zendesk.com.

    In short, the email channel is still being used, but maybe not for creating tickets.

    T
    • Tom31
    • Author
    • June 3, 2022

    Thanks @lou11 for clarifying, I see what you mean. The (awful) chat experience makes a good case for letting customers choose, though allowing for a cold inbound email does create some questions about authentication (e.g. you need the customer to reply again in order to confirm/proceed with any serious account changes, to avoid the risk of someone spoofing/imitating an email address). 

      G
      • Gishani
      • May 9, 2024

      Hi Tom,

      I know this is an old thread, but taking a chance because I'm looking at the aauthentication process for emails so I am very interested in your comment and your thoughts on ways to strengthen email auth practices.

      The sending of any personal information over email (to authenticate) has it's own risks. I think a portal would be a more secure channel, with multi-factor auth. Customers prefer email though, it's the easier way to engage us. Would love to hear your thoughts on how to more securely auth emails!

       

      Thanks,

      Gishani

      T
      • Tom31
      • Author
      • May 9, 2024

      Hi Gishani, 

       

      In our case we're dealing with small business owners and consumers who are already a bit frustrated at having to contact Support. The context is they need help with our software product because it's not sufficiently self-serve or is too hard to use, so the last thing we want to do is put up another barrier when they're trying to get help. 

       

      We make it very easy to contact us through a custom “contact form” that's pre-authenticated to the user within our app, so the majority of our tickets are pre-authenticated. We still allow cold inbound email… we just make a point to reply and confirm on any account-impacting issues. For example, if someone wants to delete their account, we explain we can do this and ask them to reply “remove” or “confirm” etc to our email, and the fact that they received our email and replied, we take that to mean they are the authenticated email owner.  

       

      We're due to add MFA soon and I expect we'll limit some of our email support options for MFA customers. For example, destructive account actions would require logging in with your MFA device. 

       

      I suppose if the user had DMARC email authentication on their sending domain, maybe that could be a way to validate that they really do belong to their sending domain (e.g. it might be cool if Zendesk showed a checkmark or something alongside a DMARC-validated inbound email). 


      We still haven't moved to the chatbot approach yet however we have relatively low volume. At some point with AI improvements it would be a nice addition. Hope that helps! 

      G
      • Gishani
      • May 13, 2024

      Hi Tom,

       

      Thanks so much for your detailed comment, very helpful!

       

      Good luck with the MFA journey.

       

      Kind regards,

      Gishani  

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