We’ve had phone support as a channel since I started at Bespoke Post in 2017 (and before). It’s obviously a little more difficult of a channel to staff well, we often see slightly lower satisfaction scores with it, but we aren’t going to sunset phones or anything, because it feels necessary to offer it as a channel.
However, we recently spun off a private label brand into a standalone site and it’s starting to do well. Right now, we’re just on email support and receiving around 1200 inbounds per month. We plan to launch SMS as a support channel for this brand by the end of Q3.
As I think about the long term future of this satellite brand and how best to staff it from a CX perspective, I always thought we’d eventually offer phone support. I know it can be frustrating for customers who want to call but aren’t given an option to do so. But I’m wondering if similar size brands in 2023 are indeed offering phones or if they’re moving more towards chat/SMS/etc as the main (or sole) communication options.
Any thoughts or insight would be much appreciated, just looking for some thought-sharing here!