The key difference between phone and email support is the expectations of the customer, not the underlying technology. When I send an email to support, I don't expect an answer for at least a few hours. When I call, I expect to get my issue resolved before hanging up. I may wait on hold for 30m, but I am going to resolve the problem before I get off the phone.
I don't believe this is due to technological limitations of email. I have had conversations via email that are essentially realtime chats. I think the real issue is that passive support simply gets a lot more support requests than non-passive support. Offering SMS sadly wouldn't resolve this, it would just be another support medium that gets flooded like email.
NOTE - By passive support I mean anything where you send a message and just wait for a response. Non-passive support would be something like a phone call where you wait on hold for someone to be available.
Comments
The key difference between phone and email support is the expectations of the customer, not the underlying technology. When I send an email to support, I don't expect an answer for at least a few hours. When I call, I expect to get my issue resolved before hanging up. I may wait on hold for 30m, but I am going to resolve the problem before I get off the phone.
I don't believe this is due to technological limitations of email. I have had conversations via email that are essentially realtime chats. I think the real issue is that passive support simply gets a lot more support requests than non-passive support. Offering SMS sadly wouldn't resolve this, it would just be another support medium that gets flooded like email.
NOTE - By passive support I mean anything where you send a message and just wait for a response. Non-passive support would be something like a phone call where you wait on hold for someone to be available.