> We've built and shipped 7 products recently and if there's one thing we've learned, it's that your personal relationship with your customer is your secret weapon as a startup. Having customers email support@company.com or message a bot via Intercom doesn't feel personal.

Agree with the personal relationship with the customer part. But if the email is <realname>@company.com, wouldn’t that be personal? I do see giving a phone number as way more involved with the customer.

> From a customer’s perspective, they’re just texting a single number. They’re not frustrated with messy tickets or being routed to 3 different people.

Isn’t that what happens here in the backend — some messy ticketing system in Slack (which I gather isn’t a ticketing system) and several people handling responses for the same customer/issue and a potential lack of coherence in responses?

I don’t mean to pick on you. I really see value in providing a phone number to customers and telling them they can text or call anytime. But somewhere your marketing message seems a bit off to me, and doesn’t make sense on the points you’re railing against.

All the best!