What I want is an issue tracker that has responsive, accountable, people on the other end. That's my ideal support experience. Phones are the worst case scenario.
The phone provides a means of contacting a human being who is (more or less) constrained to respond to you in some fashion, rather than being able to simply fail to acknowledge what you say.
Any system that provided contact with a human who actually responded would be satisfactory. Bonus points if the human has the authority to escalate things they THEY (not the irate customer) believe that they need to be escalated.
I'd love to start a company that offered this sort of communication AS A SERVICE. In fact, I could run a very successful business just offering "talk to a human" services for one or two big companies (Google, I'm talking to you). But the problem is how to get the company to cooperate -- it would require "political connections" within a company with poor customer service.
My company does exactly this (mostly for multilingual support), and I'm pretty sure it's pretty common (and in some cases exceedingly disliked by customers -- I'm looking at you, offshore support) to outsource your phone customer service.
Good point. It _is_ disliked by customers. The only thing worse than outsourced customer service is ABSOLUTELY NO customer service.
Bandwidth and latency. You can convey, to a human at least, much more with your tone, cadence, etc, than over email or even chat. You will also get much quicker responses and more empathy because of this, and because of the cultural norms around polite conversation (answering when spoken to, etc). You will also be able to judge better the listener's level of empathy and react accordingly.
Text is great for recording and distributing facts, but not so for emotions and the rest of the human psyche, which play a huge part in support and customer service.
While there are occasional hiccups, more often our biggest complaint is time zone differences not language, since calls are routed to the proper language queue world wide. Our support staff is chosen for tech knowledge and comfort with language and customer service skills.
Now I mention userbase mattering since were primarily working with it professionals not your average computer user. There seems to be a higher likelihood that tech people world wide know at least some English or have someone in office who speaks it. If truly no one in the customer's business speaks English, we've gotten by on translate tools and a lot of patience and understanding. The rather specific nature of our product allows a narrower vocabulary to be used, and support works well even if we don't understand each other through spoken word.
This obviously couldn't work for all things - a large enough userbase tends to have no common denominator you can rely on. But if your product Has a clear customer in mind with a certain background multi lingual phone support is plenty possible.
Email and chat support doesn't have this UX issue.
It's not so much "on the phone", as "talking to an actual human being whose job it is to help solve problems like mine". The 'phone' part of it is mostly incidental, although obviously it works better than typing for people who aren't as comfortable with keyboards.
Even for non-technical, non-complicated stuff, where going off-script isn't a concern, it's still such a tedious waste of time to have to call someone. I get angry at T-Mobile about once every couple of months (I've got a complicated and expensive mobile broadband habit, spread across two providers, so I spend a lot of time fiddling with my mobile data plans), because their website often won't let me change service without talking to a human.
hold music plays
If I sound bitter...well, I really hate phones. My favorite support experiences have never been on the phone. Chat maybe, email maybe, phone never.
THIS. TIMES. A. MILLION.
Call centers put pressure on employees, especially good ones to wrap up calls quickly to keep their numbers high (because shitty policies result in a ton of people calling) meaning that even if you get a rep who legitimately wants to help you, they are punished in their job if they try too hard to do that (or take too long.)
Sidebar; Maybe this is a generational thing, I hate the phone. I hate being on the phone, I hate using the phone. If I have to talk to sales reps I'd much rather do it over email/in person, but not over the phone.
But for the most part I think phone support is a less efficient way to work and actually waste a lot of time both for the customer (waiting in line) and support side. It's expensive for the company but because it's expensive and cumbersome it works as a form of escalation. And given that they are wasting time & money keeping someone on phone might mean they provide some form of support. At least thats what I think.
So it really isn't the best way to support for the most part. But depending on the issue after its triaged, tracked through a issue tracker sometimes a proper phone/conference call might actually be helpful.
Because it's comforting to know that someone is actually looking at your problem and that it's just not awaiting for automation on some pile. Most of the times when I have a problem I need it fixed straight away.
And because companies forums/frequently asked questions/chat/whatever don't cover all your support needs. It's often a big labyrinth. I personally passed through some hard times with Microsoft, Google and Vodafone. Glad that with Amazon, chat support has been very helpful so far.
Which is the real problem, phone calls cost companies more so they prioritize getting you off the phone.