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Comment by swrobel | Hacker News Reader

As the guy who uses live chat first and foremost everywhere it’s available, I’m well aware that I’m getting a much lower level of service than I would on the phone just to avoid being on the phone with someone. The simple fact is that a person can only be on the phone with one other person at a time, but live chat reps can (and do) service many customers at the same time. Don’t kid yourself about his motivations for eliminating phone support.

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Exactly.

Always remember that youre reading marketing fluff first. Be able to unpack the motivations behind the fluff and you find that money is the reason.

I actually don’t think this is the case for JetBlue - they’ve always been focused on providing good customer service. Customer service reps can address the 80% simple support cases more efficiently over chat than on the phone. You _could_ say that yes, efficiency is about the money, but really it’s a better experience for everyone involved (customer and service rep) to spend less time getting support.

Still, thats a rosey goal - I just have a cynical-pessimistic view on the actual outcome...

This is already a thing at JetBlue - they rolled out a chat widget on their website recently and it has reduced the number of incoming phone support requests. Their customer service reps working chat love it because they can help more customers in the same period of time. Even better is that if the rep still needs to talk with the customer over the phone to address an issue.. they can! The agent can just call the customer to address that 5-10% use case.

I don't foresee them getting rid of phone altogether.. _that_ seems rosey. But I certainly see a 95% chat / SMS future with voice only as strictly needed.

Perhaps, but I've always had much better service from live chat than from phone calls in practice. Plus, you never have to wait on hold with live chat...

Most importantly, you have written proof what they said.

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